Ganges

The Ganges is a long river in India and Bangladesh.

It starts high in the snowy mountains. Then it flows across wide, flat land where many people grow food. At the end, it joins another big river and flows into the sea.

The Ganges is the great river of the plains of northern India. In Hindi and other Indian languages it is called the Ganga. It rises in the Himalayas, flows southeast across the wide, flat Indo-Gangetic Plain, and enters Bangladesh, where it is called the Padma. There it joins the mighty Brahmaputra and flows into the Bay of Bengal.

At about 2,510 kilometers, it is not as long as some of the world's great rivers, but it drains about one-fourth of India. Its plain is one of the most fertile and crowded places on Earth, and hundreds of millions of people live in its basin. Big cities along it include Kanpur, Prayagraj, Varanasi and Patna, and Kolkata stands on one of its delta branches.

Britannica describes the Ganges as the great river of the plains of the northern Indian subcontinent: about 2,510 km long, relatively short among Asia's great rivers, yet draining one-fourth of India's territory and a basin of some 1,086,000 km² that supports hundreds of millions of people. It flows generally northwest to southeast, and southward at its delta, which lies mostly in Bangladesh and is shared with the Brahmaputra.

The Gangetic Plain has been the heartland of successive civilizations: the Mauryan empire of Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE was centered on Pataliputra (Patna), on the Ganges, and the Mughal Empire's centers lay in the western basin. Its peoples are of mixed origin, speaking Indo-Aryan, Austroasiatic, Dravidian and Tibeto-Burman languages, joined over centuries by newcomers from the west. The Ganges-Brahmaputra system has the third-greatest average discharge of the world's rivers, about 30,770 m³/s, of which the Ganges supplies about 11,000 m³/s; their combined sediment load, about 1.84 billion tons a year, is the world's highest.

A special dolphin lives in the Ganges.

It can hardly see, so it finds food with sound. Many fish swim in the river. Near the sea, tigers live in a forest that grows in salty water.

The Ganges river dolphin lives in the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers. It is nearly blind and finds its way and its food using sound, like sonar. Britannica says it is endangered because of human activity. Many fish swim in the rivers, and in the delta fish are an important part of people's meals. In winter, ducks fly south over the Himalayas to rest on the flooded land.

Where the delta meets the sea lies the Sundarbans, which UNESCO calls the largest mangrove forest in the world. Mangroves are trees that grow in salty, muddy water. UNESCO says the Sundarbans is the only mangrove forest where tigers live, and they can swim long distances.

Most of the basin's original vegetation has been cleared for intensive farming, Britannica notes; 16th- and 17th-century writings record elephants, buffalo, rhinoceroses, lions and tigers in the once-forested Ganges-Yamuna area, but large wild animals are now few except in the Sundarbans. The Ganges river dolphin, or susu (Platanista gangetica), nearly sightless and reliant on sonar, occurs throughout the Ganges-Brahmaputra basin and is considered endangered.

UNESCO's Sundarbans National Park in India (inscribed 1987) is part of the world's largest mangrove forest, shared with Bangladesh, and in its words the only one inhabited by the tiger, which has adapted to an almost amphibious life and feeds on fish, crabs and water monitors. Some 78 mangrove species make it, UNESCO says, the richest mangrove forest in the world. It shelters Irrawaddy and Ganges river dolphins, the king cobra, the endemic river terrapin once thought extinct, nesting olive ridley, green and hawksbill turtles, and two horseshoe crab species, and it acts as a nursery for marine life and a buffer against cyclones.

Many people use the Ganges every day.

Farmers bring its water to their fields. Boats carry people and goods. For many Hindus, the Ganges is a very special, holy river, and they come to bathe in it.

People have used the Ganges for thousands of years. A Greek visitor named Megasthenes wrote about boats and irrigation on it in the 4th century BCE. Today huge canals carry its water to fields of sugarcane, cotton and other crops; the Upper Ganga Canal and its branches are about 9,575 kilometers long.

The river also matters deeply to many people's faith. Britannica explains that many Hindus regard the Ganges as the holiest of rivers. Pilgrims travel to places along it, such as Haridwar, Varanasi and Prayagraj, to bathe in its water. At Prayagraj, where the Yamuna joins the Ganges, a bathing festival called a mela is held in January and February, when hundreds of thousands of people step into the river.

Irrigation from the Ganges goes back more than 2,000 years; Megasthenes recorded both irrigation and navigation in the 4th century BCE, Mughal rulers built canals and the British extended them. The Upper Ganga Canal from Haridwar and its branches total about 9,575 km, the Lower Ganga Canal about 8,240 km. Paddle steamers once ran from Kolkata to Prayagraj, but railways from the mid-19th century and water withdrawals reduced river traffic; India's national waterway system still includes about 1,600 km from Prayagraj to Haldia, and in Bangladesh and West Bengal waterways carry jute, tea and grain.

Britannica describes the Ganges as the holiest of rivers for Hindus. Pilgrimage places, called tirthas, on its banks have particular significance; among them are Gangotri, Haridwar, Varanasi and the confluence with the Yamuna near Prayagraj, where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims bathe during a mela in January and February. Water is also shared across borders: the Farakka Barrage began diverting water toward Kolkata in 1976, and in 1996 India and Bangladesh signed an agreement apportioning the river's water.

Lots of dirty water goes into the Ganges.

That makes the river unhealthy for fish, dolphins and people. India has big plans to clean it. New treatment plants clean dirty water before it reaches the river.

So many people live along the Ganges that keeping it clean is very hard. Britannica explains that untreated sewage from cities, waste from factories and runoff from farms pour into it, and harmful bacteria and toxic metals have been found in its water.

India began a clean-up plan, the Ganga Action Plan, in 1986. In 2014 the government started a new program, Namami Gange, to clean the river's surface, build sewage treatment plants and protect its wildlife. Britannica reports that by 2025 the program had improved water quality and that the number of Ganges river dolphins had increased.

Britannica lists the pressures: scores of cities and towns discharge untreated sewage, dozens of factories add industrial waste, and agricultural runoff and animal carcasses add more, leaving high levels of disease-causing bacteria and toxic substances such as chromium, cadmium and arsenic. Dams on the headwaters raise their own concerns, including habitat loss and the relocation of people.

The Ganga Action Plan of 1986 was generally judged inadequate; its successor, the National Ganga River Basin Authority (2009), drew early criticism too. The National Mission for Clean Ganga, registered in 2011, was the authority's implementation arm and now works under the National Ganga Council, constituted in 2016, with committees from national to district level. The Namami Gange program, launched in 2014, targets surface cleaning, sewage treatment, ecological renewal and public awareness; Britannica reports that about 15 percent of the river's course had been restored by 2022 and, as of 2025, progress in water quality and sewage treatment capacity, along with an increase in the Gangetic dolphin population.