Gangotri, India - 2009 Photoexpedition

Gangotri, India - 2009 Photoexpedition

The Gangotri glacier is situated in the state of Uttarakhand and is one of many great glaciers in the located in the Indian Himalayas. However, no other glacier is as significant both economically and spiritually as the Gangotri glacier. The Gangotri is the main glacier that feeds the great Ganges River, which flows through northern India with its enormous population. Downstream thousands of people are cremated every year along the banks of the river in order to reach their nirvana. The Ganges River is an integral part of Hinduism. No other river on earth is adored by mass humanity like the Ganges.

Hindus also worship the source of their great river Gangotri. Millions of Hindus hope that they will be able to pay homage to the mouth of the glacier at Gaumukh in a once in a lifetime pilgrimage. The glacier is inhospitable and difficult to reach and only the hardiest of Hindus make it all the way to the glacier itself. I accompanied a small Greenpeace team on our very own pilgrimage to the glacier mouth to witness for ourselves how climatic change is affecting the source of Asia's longest and most auspicious river.

Observing the river sweeping through the mountain it was very easy to imagine how the glacier would have shaped the valley in centuries gone by. Snow that once lay on all the mountain peaks which we see on the horizon has disappeared and the peaks are now bare and only display snow for a few hours after an unusually cold night. The land is naked and barren. We see doves and crows flying above - something that would of been unheard of a decade ago at such a high altitude.

Before we set off we met a holy Sadhu named Swami Sundaranand otherwise known as the 'Clicking Sadhu'. He has taken over 40,000 pictures of the Gangotri glacier over the last 40 years. We are going to shoot a before and now of the Glacier snout using a picture the 'Clicking Sadhu' had taken in 1984 and note the change in the glacier comparing the photographs taken twenty five years apart.

Swami Sundaranand explains " The glacier has been sick for a long time now. Over the years especially over the last 20 years I started to see the change become more apparent and more rapid, the mouth where the holy river flows from the glacier started to shrink. This alarmed me as the mouth used to be a formidable sight. " He continues “ I believe because the region is warmer now the rocks are becoming much looser and falling all along the glacier floor. Even the mouth itself is brown and grey. It used to reflect blues and greens and a wonderful white." He adds "When I was very young I first visited the glacier in the early 60s and back then it was around the bend. I saw over time it slowly disappear around the bend of the valley. You cannot see the glacier from where I first saw it, its disappeared out of sight, the whole area used to be paradise for a photographer, when I see photo's of the area today, it makes me very sad.”

Along the route we were faced with reminders of where the once mighty glacier used to be. The Indian government has painted dates and locations of the glacier on random stones that were probably once moved by the glacier itself. The dates range from 1891 to 2007. On some of the early recordings such as the one undertaken in 1935 we saw that the glacier was just a few kilometres away. It was a startling reminder just how relentless the glacier has receded year by year.

The river flowed out of the glacier carrying huge blocks of melted ice. Nearby we uncovered the most recent of all the government’s signs from 2007. In only 2 years the glacier had receded around 25 meters. A GPS was made by Greenpeace at the mouth of the glacier so it can monitor in the future.

I then photographed Gaumukh from the exact spot where my Sadhu friend had photographed 25 years earlier. The only difference is that I was a few hundred meters back and the glacier was in the distance!

If the Gangotri glacier continues to recede at its current rate at around the middle of this century then the great Ganges river will only be fed by the seasonal monsoon. Asia's longest river will simply be a seasonal river. The consequences for billions of Indian people in the world’s most densely populated regions would be immense. If the glacier disappears the rice bowl of India that relies on irrigation from the 'Holy Mother Ganges' will be empty causing catastrophic food shortages.

Indeed nobody knows when arguably the most important glacier of them all will disappear. As the rate of acceleration gathers pace it is a case of when and not if it disappears.

I left the glacier feeling in a sombre mood. Perhaps if more Hindus could also observe the fate of the birthplace of their sacred River Ganges more effort would be made to tackle the problems faced by the Gangotri glacier.