this river supports 400 million people
the river is believed to have curative
powers it can wash you of your sins
bring you closer to God but of course
there’s a great paradox they don’t think
they can actually hurt it because it
isn’t God they said the river is sick
but it is still God I wondered what
would happen if we took a river that was
actually believed to be sacred that
could was actually – believed to be a
goddess or or part of a living entity
that was part of religion the Ganges
River is fifteen hundred and fifty miles
it supports 400 million people and is
believed to be sacred by 1 billion Hindu
so we decided to follow the river start
all the way at the top as far as we
could go this is basically the epicenter
21,000 foot shivling peak which is
believed to be the center of the
universe in the Hindu world where our
Lord Shiva came down and slowed the
river from the heavens to the earth
through the locks of his hair we decided
to go past shivling which is in the back
all the way to the top of the Gangotri
glacier into the Garhwal region of the
Himalaya up near the China and Pakistani
border we weren’t even allowed to bring
satellite phones they were afraid
they’re using them for terrorism
activities so three of us came up to
this very remote region in an attempt to
climb this peak right there
Chuck whom before never climbed before
twenty-two thousand five hundred feet
high this is a little out of my climbing
range to be honest well these two guys
Jake Norton he found Mallory’s body on
Everest Dave Morton he’s guided all
Seven Summits
combined they’ve stood on the top of
Mount Everest nine times seemed like
pretty good company it’s actually a
little nervous they were just gonna drag
me into anything
and we got up to the top 18,000 feet of
the Gangotri glacier and we were getting
prepared to start climbing this
unclimbed peak we’re gonna do water
samples up at the top and an
unpredictable monsoon pattern rolled in
Jake could detected hours before it
happens what are you talking about the
weather’s great and sure enough this
weather started rolling in at 4 p.m. it
started snowing it snowed 3 feet in 12
hours did count 36 avalanches counting
through the night which a mix between
thunder artillery distant drones and
someone banging a drum over my head so
we packed up our tents had to leave much
of our stuff and basically flood hiking
out with no trail down a glacier with
heavy packs is challenging especially
when you have to fight it through 3 feet
in retrospect we left our ropes which
maybe wasn’t the smartest thing as we’re
crossing a lot of crevasses but we were
we were challenged was either tent or
ropes what are we going to do here so we
came down and negotiated safely through
some of these crevasses and made it back
to the safety of this little tiny ashram
this place where a guy named silent baba
lives it’s at 14,000 feet Sally Bob is a
really interesting guy many believe the
further up the Ganges you go it is more
sacred the rivers believed to have
curative powers it can wash you of your
sins they can cut it can bring you
closer to God
well salad baba decided he’s gonna go
all the way to the top and live up there
at 14,000 feet and in addition to prove
that he’s that devoted he’s not gonna
speak anymore so he doesn’t talk and if
you look at his front yard basically
below shoveling you can see the wild
ibex leaping about and jumping across
this is one of the spots that I took a
water sample I’ll show you some of the
water sample data as we move down stream
so unfortunately these guys are big
sponsored Eddie Bauer athletes they were
bummed we didn’t climb I was somewhat
secretly relieved that I’d have to go up
that mountain and we found negotiated
our way back down the Gangotri glacier
it took us four days and give you an
idea of how powerful this game DS River
is there was a glacial outburst from
another one of it
tributaries that literally tore through
this area called you Takashi and you can
see how populated is once you descend
out of that upper Gaara region it killed
six thousand people and then once you
leave the very upper highlands of the
Ganges you come down to this remarkable
dam the Tehri dam the largest dam in
Asia very controversial mostly
controversial because if this river is
God and you dam a river that is God you
dam God what becomes of God is it still
sacred so many ask that on a spiritual
level it also submerged 40 villages and
displaced a hundred thousand people but
it does produce two hundred thousand
megawatts of electricity which is very
important in in a developing nation of
course just downstream is deaf Prayag a
very spiritual place officially on a map
this is where the Ganges starts the
river on the left is the bog arathi
that’s the source River that’s the river
we went up the river on the right is the
aaalac Ananda you can see the difference
between what a dam does and what a dam
doesn’t do on the right is the natural
hue the sediment carrying loads etc that
emerald green again clear water coming
down on the left because of the dam when
you get below dev Priok down into some
of the more populated foothills this is
around in Rishikesh and Haridwar
you start to see the real love and
adornment of the river this is called
Aarti it’s a daily ritual in the Hindu
culture where they come to do offerings
and sing songs and offer flame flame
which equals light which equals humility
in front of your gods and they basically
come out every single day at five
o’clock and give this River a group hug
and it’s beautiful it’s really beautiful
but of course there’s a great paradox
they don’t think they can actually hurt
it because it is a god or they may do
offerings that are unaware that they’re
putting plastic in the river that’s bad
so the people that adorn it are also
partially killing it now just to give
you a flavor some sights and sounds of
Aarti I’m going to play a short video
I’m gonna keep moving you downstream try
to get us to the end of this river
remarkable River when you get up in the
air but to give you an idea how hard
that is in India helicopters and
aircraft are used for the military only
this took me two years to get this
flight but you’re able to see from the
air kind of the beauty the marvel of the
Himalaya and hazardous River descends
and through the terrorists and populated
areas I mean ii think this river
supports 400 million people and we
wanted to do something different – we
didn’t i wanted to document it and try
to raise awareness but I also wanted to
to do some testing to prove is this
people claim it’s the most contaminated
river in the world and what is the
situation with this water how bad is it
so we brought some water testing devices
this is actually in front of Agra and
the Taj in Agra in front of the Taj
Mahal many people maybe some of you have
been to the Taj Mahal but nobody goes
out here this is the most putrid river
I’ve ever stepped my foot in my life I
mean it was garbage and and crap
everywhere and there was a half-eaten
dead monkey floating by me
nasty nasty water and they do say that
the Gangaajal the the ganges water is
powerful its curative there’s something
special about it and I’m like really
listen we need to figure this out as
early as 1896 the British were actually
putting cholera bacteria into Ganges
water and it was dying so the Ganges had
a power to it a curative power that was
in fact unusual but here in the Yamuna
River this is what our data showed this
is the oxygen dissolved oxygen content
if you’re above 8 on a river with a dal
oxygen which all the species and plant
and flora need you’re healthy River well
right there at Yamuna in front of Agra
it was zero basically a dead river and
just to give you an idea of what happens
on the inverse we tested for 21 heavy
metals this was one of the just the
higher ranges the yellow line is the
safety line for human interaction so of
course I was standing knee-deep in a
river that is just laden with zinc just
one of the many heavy metals it was high
so not a healthy River but what’s
interesting is the oxygen level came
back you saw that dip it came back up so
somehow this river
on some level is restoring itself we
jump back over to comp or where you see
people of course treating the river much
like a laundromat
nobody was swimming here in Kanpur they
said the river is sick but it is still
God first signs of fishing we saw this
is in part because we start coming into
the Muslim religion that’s mixed in this
section of Ganges here by Hindu religion
they’re all vegetarian and they won’t
fish or allow it but in this area we saw
some fishing and then we also wanted to
see some of the industry Kanpur was
basically built as a textile town by the
British great access because of the
Ganges River so this is a leather
tannery there are four hundred running
tanneries in Kanpur and they produce 8
percent of the world’s leather supply
much of us are probably wearing the
leather that goes to our fine shoes most
of its buffalo some cow yes the cow and
Buffalo are sacred but if you’re not
Hindu you can work in this industry when
you’re in a tannery this is one of the
cleaner ones they’re actually following
protocol they have to recycle their
water now by government 70 tanneries
were shuttered down by the government
but it is one of the most toxic places I
have ever been in my life this was like
walking into a bottle of ammonia my nose
almost exploded when I walked in here
and they’re basically bathing it in this
heavy metal called chromium which is a
very toxic very nasty heavy metal
creates lung cancer liver failure kidney
damage premature dementia and in 2013
they did a study that they’re basically
pumping out 79 million gallons of
contaminated water into the Ganges
around Kanpur and they only have a
capacity to process 45 million gallons
so only half of their water is getting
cleaned this is a worker outside of a
tannery trying to bathe himself off and
he’s kneeling on basically a pancake of
dried chromium outside the kids are
playing a gleeful game of cricket the
national sport and they’re playing on a
field of chromium Laden leather scraps
it makes me think about my leather shoes
in a whole new way like I said we tested
21 heavy metals I just want to give you
an idea of what it’s like at Kanpur
where the tanneries are that’s chromium
spikes right off the roof even with all
the new recycling that the government’s
trying to do we move downstream Indian
traffic jam very typical India is a
spectacular place it’s so rich in
humanity practicality sometimes and
functionality doesn’t always work but it
is overcome with humanity it’s really
wonderful we moved into Varanasi it is
one of the oldest inhabited cities in
the world people have been living here
for 5000 years again one of these are
tea ceremonies Varanasi is considered
sacred they perform Aarti in sacred
cities again fire equals light equals
humility people coming from the banks to
watch it and then just downstream you
can come here to pray and around the
corner people come to die all this work
and a bunch of essays I wrote were
published on the National Geographic
magazine proof blog recently I’m just
going to read you the opening sentence
of the blog that went with the Varanasi
story when you step off a wooden boat
onto the banks of the Burning God in the
oldest of India’s cities and you weave
through a maze of funeral pyres hissing
steaming and spitting orange embers into
the inky night and you feel the
metrodome clang of bells vibrating
inside your chest and a wave of furnace
like heat consuming everything in its
reach you realize how removed you truly
are from the ritual of death that was
the most run-on sentence I’ve ever
written in my life but I liked it
that was in the evening and the burning
Ghat this is in the morning back here at
4:30 in the morning very challenging to
get access you’re not supposed to
photograph here it took me three days to
get access very powerful place to be you
see the the goats eating flowers the
doves that’s a femur bone these are all
the ashes and bodies that have been
burned and the belief is that if you are
burned on the banks of the Ganges and in
Varanasi specifically and your ashes are
thrown into the Ganges River which
you’re seeing right here that’s human
ash that you will achieve a level of
moksha in the Hindu religion and moksha
means you’ll break the cycle of birth
and rebirth you will not come back into
this world you’ll not come back as a
cricket or a cow or another human
whatever you will actually go to heaven
so many people actually will come to die
in Varanasi it’s that important to them
to reach heaven this way and one
challenge though of course is burning
all these bodies uses a tremendous
amount of wood it can take 1,100 pounds
of logs to burn one large body 50 to 60
million trees from the Himalaya are
getting cut down you see them getting
barged up to the burning ghat here a
very complicated situation and of course
this is a very common sight when you get
further down the stream this is just 200
yards from the Ganges just a very
typical drainage of course it stems much
in part from the Ganges as God I mean a
Ganges gonna clean itself
God doesn’t big deal if you pollute God
who God is all-powerful goddess however
you perceive it we moved further
downstream all the way to pop my place a
few people go and of course we left the
crazy monsoon storm with three feet at
the top and we entered into a cyclone we
figured what the hell we got to make it
to the end though it was raining so hard
my eyelids were peeling back I felt like
I had a sandblaster in my face didn’t
stop these guys these guys are out
celebrating and Full Tilt of festival
called Durga Puja good over evil and
they built these big big statues of
their deities and they bring him down
and of course they offer him to Mangal a
mother Ganges offer these offerings to
the god of course the
is bigger now it’s got a bigger current
it’s wider but all of these offerings
just sort of float and collect on the
banks and many of them will have lead
paint and plastic and whatnot they’re
not all biodegradable further downstream
we moved across into Bengal the last
state on the Ganges Durga Puja continued
and raged through the night here all the
villages were building their statues and
come and giving offer and putting on the
malazan and then carrying them and then
throwing them into Ganges is a great
offering in Calcutta on the southern
edge in the Indian side of the the Delta
we’ve now come about 1,500 miles this is
one of the main shipping lanes from
Calcutta and in a very typical scene you
have somebody praying somebody drinking
water
somebody washing their hair somebody
collecting sacred Gangaajal that are
gonna be back to their village back to
the our water data this whole concept of
the river coming back to life is
interesting because there’s a thing
they’re calling the X Factor they
believe it’s related to bacteria phages
that if all these people are coming to
the river every day and they’re treating
it like a bathroom why are they not
getting sicker
well the oxygen level does return and
the oxygen actually helps to to support
these bacteria phages which eat bacteria
and that’s one theory why these
epidemics cholera epidemics haven’t
occurred with 1 million people coming
for certain festivals and whatnot so
there is some element of a curative
power to this river and after six weeks
traveling 1550 miles roughly three
vertical miles in theory we were free of
sin because believe me I did Wade
walk swim fall in to the Ganges many
times on this trip yes I was free of sin
and I was free of thirty-five pounds I
lost a bit of weight it’s a good weight
loss program we reached the Bay of
Bengal at saga island where you can come
give an offering to my Ganga to the
river to this pack of stray dogs that
all are related
so there is the Ganges just to give you
a little overlay of the locations in the
water testing this is the heavy metal
testing you see some heavy spikes on the
Yamuna River which is basically flushing
out New Delhi and all the industry there
Agra of course is the lower part of that
so it’s somehow digests a lot of that
heavy metal input and puts it at bay to
a degree but it’s not gonna last
now the new Prime Minister of India Modi
has actually budgeted and this is very
new it’s very recent 340 million dollars
to clean up the Ganges so there is some
hope there are people listening they’re
paying attention this was some of our
other testing nitrates are very high at
the top of the river there’s probably
blowing in from China from fertilizer
you can see the temperature basically
steadily drop and this is oxygen the
main one so you see the river try to
come back to life which is unusual but
it’s slowly it turns into nearly a dead
river at the end but I want you to
remember not the river for its data or
its contamination I want you to remember
for its sound so have one more India
video it’s just a minute and a half long
so all the rivers in our all the water
in our rivers and our ecosystems our
water table is very limited and no
matter where you live in Washington DC
or you live in Colorado where I do or
you live in India I like to urge people
that I think all these rivers and all
our water systems should be sacred
because they all are scarce thank you
very much
you
the river is believed to have curative
powers it can wash you of your sins
bring you closer to God but of course
there’s a great paradox they don’t think
they can actually hurt it because it
isn’t God they said the river is sick
but it is still God I wondered what
would happen if we took a river that was
actually believed to be sacred that
could was actually – believed to be a
goddess or or part of a living entity
that was part of religion the Ganges
River is fifteen hundred and fifty miles
it supports 400 million people and is
believed to be sacred by 1 billion Hindu
so we decided to follow the river start
all the way at the top as far as we
could go this is basically the epicenter
21,000 foot shivling peak which is
believed to be the center of the
universe in the Hindu world where our
Lord Shiva came down and slowed the
river from the heavens to the earth
through the locks of his hair we decided
to go past shivling which is in the back
all the way to the top of the Gangotri
glacier into the Garhwal region of the
Himalaya up near the China and Pakistani
border we weren’t even allowed to bring
satellite phones they were afraid
they’re using them for terrorism
activities so three of us came up to
this very remote region in an attempt to
climb this peak right there
Chuck whom before never climbed before
twenty-two thousand five hundred feet
high this is a little out of my climbing
range to be honest well these two guys
Jake Norton he found Mallory’s body on
Everest Dave Morton he’s guided all
Seven Summits
combined they’ve stood on the top of
Mount Everest nine times seemed like
pretty good company it’s actually a
little nervous they were just gonna drag
me into anything
and we got up to the top 18,000 feet of
the Gangotri glacier and we were getting
prepared to start climbing this
unclimbed peak we’re gonna do water
samples up at the top and an
unpredictable monsoon pattern rolled in
Jake could detected hours before it
happens what are you talking about the
weather’s great and sure enough this
weather started rolling in at 4 p.m. it
started snowing it snowed 3 feet in 12
hours did count 36 avalanches counting
through the night which a mix between
thunder artillery distant drones and
someone banging a drum over my head so
we packed up our tents had to leave much
of our stuff and basically flood hiking
out with no trail down a glacier with
heavy packs is challenging especially
when you have to fight it through 3 feet
in retrospect we left our ropes which
maybe wasn’t the smartest thing as we’re
crossing a lot of crevasses but we were
we were challenged was either tent or
ropes what are we going to do here so we
came down and negotiated safely through
some of these crevasses and made it back
to the safety of this little tiny ashram
this place where a guy named silent baba
lives it’s at 14,000 feet Sally Bob is a
really interesting guy many believe the
further up the Ganges you go it is more
sacred the rivers believed to have
curative powers it can wash you of your
sins they can cut it can bring you
closer to God
well salad baba decided he’s gonna go
all the way to the top and live up there
at 14,000 feet and in addition to prove
that he’s that devoted he’s not gonna
speak anymore so he doesn’t talk and if
you look at his front yard basically
below shoveling you can see the wild
ibex leaping about and jumping across
this is one of the spots that I took a
water sample I’ll show you some of the
water sample data as we move down stream
so unfortunately these guys are big
sponsored Eddie Bauer athletes they were
bummed we didn’t climb I was somewhat
secretly relieved that I’d have to go up
that mountain and we found negotiated
our way back down the Gangotri glacier
it took us four days and give you an
idea of how powerful this game DS River
is there was a glacial outburst from
another one of it
tributaries that literally tore through
this area called you Takashi and you can
see how populated is once you descend
out of that upper Gaara region it killed
six thousand people and then once you
leave the very upper highlands of the
Ganges you come down to this remarkable
dam the Tehri dam the largest dam in
Asia very controversial mostly
controversial because if this river is
God and you dam a river that is God you
dam God what becomes of God is it still
sacred so many ask that on a spiritual
level it also submerged 40 villages and
displaced a hundred thousand people but
it does produce two hundred thousand
megawatts of electricity which is very
important in in a developing nation of
course just downstream is deaf Prayag a
very spiritual place officially on a map
this is where the Ganges starts the
river on the left is the bog arathi
that’s the source River that’s the river
we went up the river on the right is the
aaalac Ananda you can see the difference
between what a dam does and what a dam
doesn’t do on the right is the natural
hue the sediment carrying loads etc that
emerald green again clear water coming
down on the left because of the dam when
you get below dev Priok down into some
of the more populated foothills this is
around in Rishikesh and Haridwar
you start to see the real love and
adornment of the river this is called
Aarti it’s a daily ritual in the Hindu
culture where they come to do offerings
and sing songs and offer flame flame
which equals light which equals humility
in front of your gods and they basically
come out every single day at five
o’clock and give this River a group hug
and it’s beautiful it’s really beautiful
but of course there’s a great paradox
they don’t think they can actually hurt
it because it is a god or they may do
offerings that are unaware that they’re
putting plastic in the river that’s bad
so the people that adorn it are also
partially killing it now just to give
you a flavor some sights and sounds of
Aarti I’m going to play a short video
I’m gonna keep moving you downstream try
to get us to the end of this river
remarkable River when you get up in the
air but to give you an idea how hard
that is in India helicopters and
aircraft are used for the military only
this took me two years to get this
flight but you’re able to see from the
air kind of the beauty the marvel of the
Himalaya and hazardous River descends
and through the terrorists and populated
areas I mean ii think this river
supports 400 million people and we
wanted to do something different – we
didn’t i wanted to document it and try
to raise awareness but I also wanted to
to do some testing to prove is this
people claim it’s the most contaminated
river in the world and what is the
situation with this water how bad is it
so we brought some water testing devices
this is actually in front of Agra and
the Taj in Agra in front of the Taj
Mahal many people maybe some of you have
been to the Taj Mahal but nobody goes
out here this is the most putrid river
I’ve ever stepped my foot in my life I
mean it was garbage and and crap
everywhere and there was a half-eaten
dead monkey floating by me
nasty nasty water and they do say that
the Gangaajal the the ganges water is
powerful its curative there’s something
special about it and I’m like really
listen we need to figure this out as
early as 1896 the British were actually
putting cholera bacteria into Ganges
water and it was dying so the Ganges had
a power to it a curative power that was
in fact unusual but here in the Yamuna
River this is what our data showed this
is the oxygen dissolved oxygen content
if you’re above 8 on a river with a dal
oxygen which all the species and plant
and flora need you’re healthy River well
right there at Yamuna in front of Agra
it was zero basically a dead river and
just to give you an idea of what happens
on the inverse we tested for 21 heavy
metals this was one of the just the
higher ranges the yellow line is the
safety line for human interaction so of
course I was standing knee-deep in a
river that is just laden with zinc just
one of the many heavy metals it was high
so not a healthy River but what’s
interesting is the oxygen level came
back you saw that dip it came back up so
somehow this river
on some level is restoring itself we
jump back over to comp or where you see
people of course treating the river much
like a laundromat
nobody was swimming here in Kanpur they
said the river is sick but it is still
God first signs of fishing we saw this
is in part because we start coming into
the Muslim religion that’s mixed in this
section of Ganges here by Hindu religion
they’re all vegetarian and they won’t
fish or allow it but in this area we saw
some fishing and then we also wanted to
see some of the industry Kanpur was
basically built as a textile town by the
British great access because of the
Ganges River so this is a leather
tannery there are four hundred running
tanneries in Kanpur and they produce 8
percent of the world’s leather supply
much of us are probably wearing the
leather that goes to our fine shoes most
of its buffalo some cow yes the cow and
Buffalo are sacred but if you’re not
Hindu you can work in this industry when
you’re in a tannery this is one of the
cleaner ones they’re actually following
protocol they have to recycle their
water now by government 70 tanneries
were shuttered down by the government
but it is one of the most toxic places I
have ever been in my life this was like
walking into a bottle of ammonia my nose
almost exploded when I walked in here
and they’re basically bathing it in this
heavy metal called chromium which is a
very toxic very nasty heavy metal
creates lung cancer liver failure kidney
damage premature dementia and in 2013
they did a study that they’re basically
pumping out 79 million gallons of
contaminated water into the Ganges
around Kanpur and they only have a
capacity to process 45 million gallons
so only half of their water is getting
cleaned this is a worker outside of a
tannery trying to bathe himself off and
he’s kneeling on basically a pancake of
dried chromium outside the kids are
playing a gleeful game of cricket the
national sport and they’re playing on a
field of chromium Laden leather scraps
it makes me think about my leather shoes
in a whole new way like I said we tested
21 heavy metals I just want to give you
an idea of what it’s like at Kanpur
where the tanneries are that’s chromium
spikes right off the roof even with all
the new recycling that the government’s
trying to do we move downstream Indian
traffic jam very typical India is a
spectacular place it’s so rich in
humanity practicality sometimes and
functionality doesn’t always work but it
is overcome with humanity it’s really
wonderful we moved into Varanasi it is
one of the oldest inhabited cities in
the world people have been living here
for 5000 years again one of these are
tea ceremonies Varanasi is considered
sacred they perform Aarti in sacred
cities again fire equals light equals
humility people coming from the banks to
watch it and then just downstream you
can come here to pray and around the
corner people come to die all this work
and a bunch of essays I wrote were
published on the National Geographic
magazine proof blog recently I’m just
going to read you the opening sentence
of the blog that went with the Varanasi
story when you step off a wooden boat
onto the banks of the Burning God in the
oldest of India’s cities and you weave
through a maze of funeral pyres hissing
steaming and spitting orange embers into
the inky night and you feel the
metrodome clang of bells vibrating
inside your chest and a wave of furnace
like heat consuming everything in its
reach you realize how removed you truly
are from the ritual of death that was
the most run-on sentence I’ve ever
written in my life but I liked it
that was in the evening and the burning
Ghat this is in the morning back here at
4:30 in the morning very challenging to
get access you’re not supposed to
photograph here it took me three days to
get access very powerful place to be you
see the the goats eating flowers the
doves that’s a femur bone these are all
the ashes and bodies that have been
burned and the belief is that if you are
burned on the banks of the Ganges and in
Varanasi specifically and your ashes are
thrown into the Ganges River which
you’re seeing right here that’s human
ash that you will achieve a level of
moksha in the Hindu religion and moksha
means you’ll break the cycle of birth
and rebirth you will not come back into
this world you’ll not come back as a
cricket or a cow or another human
whatever you will actually go to heaven
so many people actually will come to die
in Varanasi it’s that important to them
to reach heaven this way and one
challenge though of course is burning
all these bodies uses a tremendous
amount of wood it can take 1,100 pounds
of logs to burn one large body 50 to 60
million trees from the Himalaya are
getting cut down you see them getting
barged up to the burning ghat here a
very complicated situation and of course
this is a very common sight when you get
further down the stream this is just 200
yards from the Ganges just a very
typical drainage of course it stems much
in part from the Ganges as God I mean a
Ganges gonna clean itself
God doesn’t big deal if you pollute God
who God is all-powerful goddess however
you perceive it we moved further
downstream all the way to pop my place a
few people go and of course we left the
crazy monsoon storm with three feet at
the top and we entered into a cyclone we
figured what the hell we got to make it
to the end though it was raining so hard
my eyelids were peeling back I felt like
I had a sandblaster in my face didn’t
stop these guys these guys are out
celebrating and Full Tilt of festival
called Durga Puja good over evil and
they built these big big statues of
their deities and they bring him down
and of course they offer him to Mangal a
mother Ganges offer these offerings to
the god of course the
is bigger now it’s got a bigger current
it’s wider but all of these offerings
just sort of float and collect on the
banks and many of them will have lead
paint and plastic and whatnot they’re
not all biodegradable further downstream
we moved across into Bengal the last
state on the Ganges Durga Puja continued
and raged through the night here all the
villages were building their statues and
come and giving offer and putting on the
malazan and then carrying them and then
throwing them into Ganges is a great
offering in Calcutta on the southern
edge in the Indian side of the the Delta
we’ve now come about 1,500 miles this is
one of the main shipping lanes from
Calcutta and in a very typical scene you
have somebody praying somebody drinking
water
somebody washing their hair somebody
collecting sacred Gangaajal that are
gonna be back to their village back to
the our water data this whole concept of
the river coming back to life is
interesting because there’s a thing
they’re calling the X Factor they
believe it’s related to bacteria phages
that if all these people are coming to
the river every day and they’re treating
it like a bathroom why are they not
getting sicker
well the oxygen level does return and
the oxygen actually helps to to support
these bacteria phages which eat bacteria
and that’s one theory why these
epidemics cholera epidemics haven’t
occurred with 1 million people coming
for certain festivals and whatnot so
there is some element of a curative
power to this river and after six weeks
traveling 1550 miles roughly three
vertical miles in theory we were free of
sin because believe me I did Wade
walk swim fall in to the Ganges many
times on this trip yes I was free of sin
and I was free of thirty-five pounds I
lost a bit of weight it’s a good weight
loss program we reached the Bay of
Bengal at saga island where you can come
give an offering to my Ganga to the
river to this pack of stray dogs that
all are related
so there is the Ganges just to give you
a little overlay of the locations in the
water testing this is the heavy metal
testing you see some heavy spikes on the
Yamuna River which is basically flushing
out New Delhi and all the industry there
Agra of course is the lower part of that
so it’s somehow digests a lot of that
heavy metal input and puts it at bay to
a degree but it’s not gonna last
now the new Prime Minister of India Modi
has actually budgeted and this is very
new it’s very recent 340 million dollars
to clean up the Ganges so there is some
hope there are people listening they’re
paying attention this was some of our
other testing nitrates are very high at
the top of the river there’s probably
blowing in from China from fertilizer
you can see the temperature basically
steadily drop and this is oxygen the
main one so you see the river try to
come back to life which is unusual but
it’s slowly it turns into nearly a dead
river at the end but I want you to
remember not the river for its data or
its contamination I want you to remember
for its sound so have one more India
video it’s just a minute and a half long
so all the rivers in our all the water
in our rivers and our ecosystems our
water table is very limited and no
matter where you live in Washington DC
or you live in Colorado where I do or
you live in India I like to urge people
that I think all these rivers and all
our water systems should be sacred
because they all are scarce thank you
very much
you
Please follow and like us: