INDIA, June 5, 2011: The Himalayan temple town of Gangotri is located at an altitude of 10,300 ft. in the Garhwal Himalayas. This is the home of the Ganga, India’s holiest river, whose physical source at Gaumukh lies just 12 miles away. Looking at the river, Swami Sundaranand shakes his head sadly. “This is not the same Ganga as earlier,” he says. Sundaranand has lived in Gangotri since 1948, when he became a renunciate and arrived here from Andhra Pradesh. A lot has changed since then, he says. Although the air is cold here, the sun is harsh. “It’s becoming hotter every year,” points out the sadhu. “People say it is global warming. I say it is a global warning.”
Locally, the 85-year old is known as the ” photographer baba” or “the sadhu who clicks.” His twin passions are environment and photography. Over the past six decades, he has combined his interests to raise awareness about the Ganga. “When I first came to this region, it was one of the most beautiful part of the Himalayas,” he says. “It is difficult to imagine the purity of the Ganga and the abundance of Himalayan vegetation and fauna that was prevalent then. We don’t know what we have cruelly destroyed.”
The pollution of Ganga in the plains has been an oft-repeated refrain. But, according to Sundaranand, a graver threat is its pollution at the source. He attributes it to the unchecked construction of hotels and ashrams in Gangotri and dumping of waste from these places directly into the Ganga. “Many bhoj trees in Bhojbasa, en route to Gaumukh have been cut down. Earlier, on my treks to the Gaumukh glacier, I could spot rare animals like the snow leopard and musk deer. They are rarely visible now,” he says.
You can see some of his photos here.