The Ganges River, India

The Ganges River

The Ganga, especially, is the river of India, beloved of her people, round 
which are intertwined her memories, her hopes and fears, her songs of triumph, her 
victories and her defeats. She has been a symbol of India's age-long culture and 
civilization, ever changing, ever flowing, and yet ever the same Ganga.

- Jawaharlal Nehru, First Prime Minister of India , born in Allahabad on the 
Ganges.

The Ganga is a major river of the Indian subcontinent, associated in myth and reality with the land and people of India as well as neighboring countries like Bangladesh .

The delta of the Ganga, or rather, that of the Hooghly and the Padma, is a vast ragged swamp forest (42,000 sq km) called the Sunderbans, home of the Royal Bengal Tiger , who still kill about 30 villagers each year. The silt-carrying waters of the Ganga stains the Bay of Bengal a muddier hue for more than 500 km into the ocean.

Click here to answer the following questions about the Ganges?

Where is the source of the Ganges River ? _____________________

______________________________________________________

What body of water does the Ganges flow into? _________________

How long is the Ganges River ? ____________________________

How wide is the Ganges Valley or basin? _____________________

Look at the map to the left.

Notice the large delta at the mouth of the Ganges . In which country is the majority of the delta located?

_______________

What direction does the river flow? __________________________

The combined delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers is the largest in the world. This true-color image from the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) shows both the delta and sediment flowing into the Bay of Bengal .

Fed by monsoon rains and Himalayan snowmelt, the rivers often flood. These floods often cause catastrophic damage, but also enrich the soil.

Ganges River

The most sacred river of the Hindus, the Ganges flows 2510 km (1560 mi) from its source in the Himalayas of northern India , to its mouth into the Bay of Bengal at Bangladesh ’s Meghna estuary. Hindu pilgrims travel to the Ganges to bathe in its waters, hoping either to benefit from its supposed restorative properties or to die and be transported to Paradise . This map illustrates the route of the river through the Indian subcontinent in southern Asia and shows the river’s many tributaries.

To learn more about the Ganges River check out these sites.

http://www.cs.albany.edu/~amit/ganges.html

http://web.bryant.edu/~langlois/ecology/gangesmap.htm

http://www.animalinfo.org/species/cetacean/platgang.htm

http://www.travel-himalayas.com/rivers-himalayas/ganga-ganges-river.html

http://www.sacredland.org/Ganges.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/Ganges_River_Dolphin

http://www.virtualology.com/virtualmuseumofnaturalhistory/aquatichall/riversandlakes/GANGESRIVER.NET/