Showing posts with label Ganga. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ganga. Show all posts

22 November 2008

VIEW OVER RISHIKESH AND GANGA ENTERING THE INDIAN PLANES

I took me 2 hours of climbing to get this view. It was more or less per coincedence, first I was following the path going up to the waterfalls in the south of Rishikesh. This path is a kind of artificial partialy with cement stairs. Half of the way to the major waterfall I detected a small path going all up to the top of the ill , with a superb view over Rishikesh and 3- 4 meanders of Ganga.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG8Xa4RQnzY

26 July 2008

THE GHOST OF THE SUNDERBANKS


PAKURTALA in the Sunderbans: Gopal Haldar has been making his living in India's Sunderbans mangrove region as a ghost for more than 40 years.

Measuring a mere 122 cm and weighing a slight 24 kilograms, Haldar -- now near to retirement age -- says he has been malnourished all his life.

"My mother was very weak. So I am. I am unable to work in the field," Halder said in an interview in the Sunderbans village of Pakurtala, about 90 kilometres south of the eastern Indian city of Kolkata in the Ganges River delta
"I have hardly had the money to buy good food or visit a doctor. I have been suffering from malnutrition since my childhood. Because of his poor health and stick-like physique, he added, neighbours had said he was "born to play a ghost".
"Women and children are even scared of going out at night in case they meet me."
"I have no regrets. Sometimes I enjoy it," he said of his spooky profession.
His wife Malati, adding resignedly, "But he is addicted to smoking hemp and spends all his money on this habit." Lighting up a hemp cigarette in front of his wife, Haldar acknowledged his love of the herb.
"When I indulge myself in smoking hemp and playing chess, I wonder if I am a real ghost or a human being," he said philosophically.

22 April 2008

DAILY ENCOUNTERS XII - THE BATH IN GANGA



On the road from Dehradun to Delhi, with stop in Hardiwar

04 November 2007

GREETINGS FROM RISHIKESH



Rishikesh claims itself as the yoga capital of the world and that might be true , seeing the amount of yoga centres and ashrams pratiscing yoga. The city is completely sitting on the bank of Ganga , which lost here already is wild nature, but is still very impressive with a milky opaque but still very clean appearance, inviting for a bath and is preparing to enter into the flat area. There are numereous of temples and a crowd of shadus, but it is still a very quite and inspiring city , inviting for relaxation and meditation

14 July 2007

DEAD RIVERS, SEWAGE and PLASTIC BAGS


India’s pollution is out of control and rivers are dying.

As an example: three billion liters of waste are pumped into Delhi's Yamuna River each day.
Like many rivers in India, New Delhi's body of water is little more than a flowing garbage dump, with fully 57 percent of the city's waste finding its way to the Yamuna. Cascades of garbage on its banks, makes it unaccesable and smells to hell. Most rivers also Mutha and Mula in Pune are so contaminated they can hardly sustain marine life.
"The rivers are dead, they are just just has not been cremated
Fully 80 percent of urban waste in India ends up in the country's rivers, and unchecked urban growth across the country combined with poor government oversight means the problem is only getting worse. A growing number of bodies of water in India are unfit for human use.


Much of the river pollution problem in India comes from untreated sewage. Samples taken recently from the Ganga River near Varanasi show that levels of fecal coliform, a dangerous bacterium that comes from untreated sewage, were some 3,000 percent higher than what is considered safe for bathing. Only 55 percent of the 15 million Delhi residents are connected to the city's sewage system. The remainder flush their bath water, waste water and just about everything else down pipes and into drains -- many of them open -- that empty into the Yamuna. Eleven of the 17 sewage treatment plants in the city are underutilized with a quarter of the plants running at less than 30 percent capacity. As it turns out, the city's decrepit sewage system is simply unable to deliver sewage to the plants. The lines are "silted and settled...and are corroded.


A further problem is presented by the sprawling slums of New Delhi that are unconnected to the system. The sewage from "1,500 unplanned colonies find its way into the drains and then into the river



There is little city residents can do. A confusing web of political appointees, civil servants, and weak elected officials with short term limits makes accountability almost impossible. At least eight separate agencies from the city, state and federal level oversee are handling the case, competing for funds.
And even in the most sophsticated areas as the industrial parks of Gurgaon you will find the most splendid new towers of the continent , directly aside of a wild wast dump ... and what is worse nobody seems to care.

Experts believe spending more money into building sewage diversion and treatment infrastructure is a waste of time. She calls for rethinking the entire pollution control paradigm, building small-scale waste treatment plants on a neighborhood scale and re-using the water locally.



And people stilla are forced to wash in the silty water, because there is no other water available.

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