Char Dham
Nowhere else on Earth are the natural and the spiritual worlds so intertwined as in India. This is a place where fire and air, animals and trees, mountains and rivers are revered as gods. One of the most powerful of these natural deities is the river Ganges.
She is a water goddess, who blesses the many faces of northern India in a thousand different ways. For millennia, she has brought shape and life to a parched land and provided sustenance for both body and soul to the countless millions who have lived and worshipped along her banks. All around her, the great cycles of birth, death, and re-birth are endlessly played out. And flowing through these natural and spiritual worlds is the Ganges, India's river of life.
India has many sacred rivers but it's the Ganga, or Ganges, that lies at the very heart of the subcontinent. To reach its delta on the shores of the Bay of Bengal the river has flowed for 1,500 miles across northern India's hot and crowded plains. But the Ganges starts life in a very different realm. Cold and imposing, the high peaks of the Himalayas have another name, Dev Bhoomi, the Land of the Gods. It's here that the Ganges is born. The source of the Ganges is a place of great significance.
But where amongst these remote peaks and glaciers, does India's most venerated river really begin? In this mystical landscape, divining the origin is as much a test of faith as of geography. Ancient temples honour four streams as the sacred sources of the Ganges.
But which is the true source of the great river?
To answer this and many more questions, through unforgiving mountain rains and snowfall, golf ball-sized hail, and life-threatening landslides interrupted occasionally by bursts of gorgeous sunshine, a childhood friend and I trekked the entire 1556 km* (966 miles) of the traditional Char Dham path interspersed with high-altitude meadows and valleys, winding mountain paths, sleepy towns, and terraced villages sitting delicately on the precipice of fragile hillsides.
Yamunotri (31.0140° N, 78.4600° E), 3,293 metres (10,804 ft)
In reality, this temple marks the starting point of Ganga's sister river, the Yamuna, and is not in any sense the true source of the Ganges. But this stream and temple are still hugely significant for Hindus. Before paying their respects, pilgrims must take a ritual bath in the natural hot springs beneath the temple.
But the real significance of Yamunotri is what the steaming sulphurous pools say about the deep and violent origins of the Himalayas. Origins that stretch back into the mists of time.
For 70 million years, India has been drifting slowly northwards and ploughing its way into Asia. The land caught between the two converging continents has been squeezed and folded upwards to form the Himalayas, a 1,500-mile-long crumple zone. And they are still rising by about 5 millimetres a year.
As the mountains continue to grow, the meltwater rivers carve their way deeper into the rocks. But thawing glaciers and melting snow are not the only sources of water that feed the Ganges.
Gangotri (30.9947° N, 78.9398° E), 3,100 metres (10,200 ft)
The old foot trails to these pilgrimage sites have been largely replaced by roads, which means thousands of pilgrims can now easily reach even the remotest of mountain shrines. And this one, one of the four sacred sources of the Ganges, is the busiest and most important temple of them all. This is Gangotri, the place where Hindus believe the Ganges first appeared on Earth.
As a goddess, Ganga originally watered the gardens of heaven, but her purifying powers were needed on Earth to cleanse the ashes of the dead. Ganga agreed to come to the aid of humankind but the impact of her descent would have destroyed the Earth. So another god, Shiva, intervened.
At Gangotri, he caught the falling river in his hair, cushioning her arrival and channeling the flow into thousands of lesser streams. The spectacular waterfall - Surya Kund - is a very earthly reminder of that tumultuous descent.
But even Gangotri can't be the true source either.
The river here is already wide and powerful, fed by one of the Himalayas’ largest glaciers higher up the valley. Just a few hundred years ago, that same glacier filled this valley, reaching right down to the village. Now, in the face of rising temperatures, it's retreated over 12 miles.
Only the most determined make the final journey up the valley to the farthest extremity of the river. Their destination is Gaumukh, the Cow's Mouth, an ice cave from which flows a milky stream. This cold and lonely place is considered by many to be the source of the Ganges. For most pilgrims, it's a fleeting visit, just time for a few prayers and a ritual bath in the frigid waters. Yet even here, it's faith rather than geography that is defining the source. Higher still, up above the glacier, there is more running water.
If the source of a river is the point farthest from the sea, then it's here, in the meadows of Tapovan, that the spiritual and geographic origins of the Ganges finally come together. Surrounded and protected by the mountain gods, nowhere could be more fitting as the birthplace of India's holiest river.
Hindus believe the source of the Ganges is a crossing point between heaven and Earth. And there's a very powerful meteorological reminder of that mythological connection - the monsoon. These torrential storms contribute over half the total annual flow of the river in just a few weeks. A destructive power is unleashed across the Himalayas, one that echoes the descent of Ganga from the heavens. All this mud and rock wrestled out of the mountains, is destined to become the river's second great gift to northern India.
Kedarnath (30.7346° N, 79.0669° E), 3,583 metres (11,755 ft)
By the end of April, this icy world is set to change. As spring creeps up into the mountains, temples and villages abandoned for the winter start to thaw. And so does the Ganges. Released from the grip of winter, water begins to flow again for the first time in months.
In turn, these streams set other journeys in motion. Pilgrims climb toward the sacred source of the Ganges. They carry with them prayers for Shiva, to reach his summer home in the village of Kedarnath, 3,500 metres up in the Himalayas. Unoccupied for the wintry months, this thousand-year-old temple is a draw when it opens. Kedarnath is a hard climb from the low villages, and one’s arrival is a cause for great celebration. In just a few months, the whole valley is magically transformed as the countercurrents of water and people ebb and flow across the slopes.
Through the short summer season, this lonely outpost will become the focus for hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from all over India. But while Kedarnath is revered as a sacred source, in truth, there are many streams that begin far deeper into the mountains. And all of them have a long journey ahead, before finally becoming part of the Ganges far below.
Badrinath (30.7433° N, 79.4938° E), 3,300 metres (10,800 ft)
Sudden storms pepper the hills with hail, returning the summer meadows to a brief wintry white. Yet even as the summer begins to deteriorate, pilgrims are still making journeys across the mountains. Many are heading deep into the hills, to Badrinath, another one of the sacred sources of the Ganges. Close to the Tibetan border, the brightly coloured temple is over 500 years old.
But the site's religious significance goes back much further. Animal gods carved into its facade are a reminder of just how intertwined the natural and spiritual worlds are in Hindu beliefs.
Surrounded by some of India's highest peaks, Badrinath attracts the worst of the weather and some of the most determined pilgrims. The pull of these remote shrines is powerful.
To visit the sacred sources brings great blessings upon the pilgrims, helping speed up their journey to a better life. But once again, as with the other sacred sources, this fierce torrent cannot be seen as the primary source of the Ganges, at least not geographically.
The river at Badrinath is fed by thousands of rain-swollen streams, tumbling down from some of the most remote and awe-inspiring corners of the Himalayas. Dominating the scene is Nanda Devi, India's second-highest peak. Regarded as a goddess in her own right, she shelters the Bhiundhar valley, one of the most magical places in India.
Over 2 billion tons of sediment is spread over the plains each year by the monsoon floods, creating and replenishing the most fertile soils on Earth. Right across the mountains, the floodwaters carve their way southwards. On this tumultuous descent, streams merge and tributaries unite. Each confluence, or prayag, is an auspicious place to worship, marking points where Ganga's waters, once dispersed by the locks of Shiva, are reunited.
The most important of all is at Deoprayag. But bathing here during the monsoon is a life-threatening devotion. Deoprayag is significant for other reasons, too. The rivers that meet here are known only by their local names, the Alaknanda and the Baghirathi. But downstream from this promontory, the larger river is officially called the Ganga for the first time. The river may have reached the gentler foothills, but there's life in her yet.
Now the river's character begins to change.
The rapids become separated by increasingly longer stretches of deeper, more placid water. The first large towns begin to appear on her banks. Still only 150 miles from its true source above Gangotri, the Ganges finally bursts from the last line of hills out onto the plains. Haridwar is one of the holiest places in India, drawing Hindu pilgrims from all over the subcontinent to celebrate and worship their divine river goddess.
Every evening, devotees gather on the temple steps to take part in a mass festival of light, or aarti, in her honour. In many ways, Haridwar is where the Ganges really begins. Upstream she is a wild and elusive river, her sources shrouded in myth and mystery. Only at Haridwar are those mountain torrents finally drawn together into one potent, powerful river that truly befits her godly status.
Now the Ganges enters a very different, very human world in which her sacred waters must now clean cities, irrigate vast fields, and nourish the bodies, as well as the spirits, of over half a billion people.
These nightly gatherings are just a taste of what is to come, as the Ganges embarks on the next stage of her epic journey to the sea.
At Haridwar, the Daughter of the Mountains has grown up to become Ganga Ma, Mother Ganges, India's river of life.
* distance according to the Apple Health app.
These images were shot on assignment for Reuters between July and November 2017 and most remain unpublished.
Text excerpts from the documentary ‘Ganges’.