60 Fun Facts About Ganges

The Ganges flows through which two countries?

Nepal's rivers feed it heavily from the north, but the main stem itself stays inside India before crossing into Bangladesh.

The Ganges ultimately empties into which body of water?

It arrives there as part of the vast Ganges Delta, the largest river delta on Earth.

What name does the main channel of the Ganges take once it enters Bangladesh?

The Bangladeshi stretch runs about 356 km southeast to its meeting with the Meghna near the sea.

The Ganges rises in the western Himalayas of which Indian state?

The whole state lies within the Ganges basin, as does the entire country of Nepal.

At which Garhwal Himalaya town do the Alaknanda and its partner headstream merge to become the Ganges?

The name means 'Godly Confluence'; the town sits about 70 km upstream of Rishikesh at 830 metres.

Which headstream is the source of the Ganges in Hindu mythology, though the Alaknanda is longer?

Hindus consider it the true source; the Alaknanda merely wins on length.

The mythological source stream of the Ganges emerges at Gomukh, at the snout of which glacier?

The glacier is about 30 km long and holds more than 27 cubic kilometres of ice.

Gomukh, the ice cave source of the Ganges, is named for a glacier snout resembling what?

The pilgrimage trek there was badly damaged by the 2013 North India floods.

At which pilgrimage town does the Ganges leave the mountains and feed the Ganges Canal?

Alcohol and non-vegetarian food are banned in the town, whose most sacred ghat is Har Ki Pauri.

The Yamuna joins the Ganges at the Triveni Sangam in which city?

The city was called Allahabad from Mughal times until October 2018.

At the Triveni Sangam, the Ganges and Yamuna are said to be joined by which invisible underground river?

The Ganges is described as flowing white and the Yamuna dark blue or green where they meet.

At their confluence, the Yamuna actually carries more water than the Ganges. Roughly what share of the combined flow does it contribute?

The Yamuna is 1,444 km long and averages roughly 2,948 m³/s at the junction.

Which river, known as the Karnali in Nepal, is the largest tributary of the Ganges by discharge?

In its lower Indian reaches through Awadh it is also called the Sarayu.

What was the main purpose of India's Farakka Barrage diverting Ganges water?

The diverted flow proved inadequate for the job, and the barrage remains a source of friction with Bangladesh.

In which year did the Farakka Barrage on the Ganges become operational?

Construction had begun in 1962; the barrage is roughly 2.3 km long with 109 gates.

In which year was the 30-year Ganges water-sharing treaty at Farakka signed with Bangladesh?

Within a year the flow at Farakka fell far below the historic average, making the guaranteed shares impossible to deliver.

Which distributary of the Ganges flows through Kolkata?

Most of its water now arrives through the man-made Farakka feeder canal rather than its natural offtake at Giria.

Kolkata's Howrah Bridge was renamed Rabindra Setu in 1965 in honour of which Nobel laureate?

Almost nobody uses the new name; it is still the Howrah Bridge to the 150,000 pedestrians who cross it daily.

What is unusual about how Kolkata's Howrah Bridge, opened in 1943, was put together?

It is described as the busiest cantilever bridge in the world.

The Ganges Delta contains the world's largest mangrove forest. What is it called?

It straddles West Bengal and Bangladesh and covers more than 10,000 square kilometres.

Which tree is the most abundant species in the mangrove forest of the Ganges Delta?

Bengal tigers survive in the Ganges basin only in these mangroves.

Roughly what proportion of the Ganges Delta lies inside Bangladesh?

Around 274 million people live on the delta despite floods and cyclones.

Which animal has the Government of India declared its National Aquatic Animal?

It is nearly blind and hunts by echolocation in the muddy water; a 2021-23 survey counted about 6,300.

Including the Ganges' own species, how many kinds of dolphin in the world live only in fresh water?

The others are the Indus, Amazon and Araguaian dolphins and China's baiji, which is now probably extinct.

The gharial, the fish-eating crocodilian of the Ganges, takes its name from the Hindustani word for what?

Adult males grow a bulbous knob on the snout that resembles the pot; the species has been critically endangered since 2007.

In classical iconography, the goddess Ganga rides which crocodile-like creature?

The earliest clear pairing of the two is in the Udayagiri Caves of central India, around 400 CE.

Which god catches the descending Ganges in his matted hair to break her fall?

He is depicted as Gangadhara, 'Bearer of the Ganga', with the river spouting from his locks.

Which legendary king's long penance is said to have brought the Ganges down from heaven?

He needed the river's water to redeem his ancestors, who had been burned to ash by an angry sage.

In the descent legend, the sage Kapila reduced how many sons of King Sagara to ash?

Only Ganges water could bring them salvation, which is why the river was needed on Earth.

In the Mahabharata, Ganga marries a Kuru king and becomes mother of the warrior Bhishma. Who is the king?

When Bhishma is mortally wounded, Ganga is said to rise from the water in human form and weep over his body.

Which British engineer designed the Ganges Canal, opened in 1854 as the largest canal yet attempted?

Its 560 km main line stretched from the Himalayan foothills to Kanpur and cost £2.15 million.

About how many ghats, stone steps down to the Ganges, does Varanasi have?

Most are used for bathing, while a few are reserved for cremations.

Varanasi's Manikarnika Ghat, a holy cremation ground, is named after which object believed to have fallen there?

Hindu genealogy registers for the city are kept at the ghat, which is mentioned in a 5th-century Gupta inscription.

The Beatles came to Rishikesh on the Ganges in 1968 to study meditation at whose ashram?

Many of the songs on the White Album were written during that stay.

Rishikesh, on the Ganges, hosts an international festival every March that earned it which nickname?

The city is vegetarian-only and alcohol-free, and is the gateway to the Char Dham pilgrimage.

Roughly how many pilgrims attended the 2025 Maha Kumbh Mela, the largest gathering on record?

The 2019 gathering had drawn about 240 million.

The Maha Kumbh Mela, held after twelve Purna Kumbh Melas, comes round how often?

The Purna Kumbh rotates among four sites; the Maha version is held only where the Ganges meets the Yamuna.

The Gangasagar Mela, held where the Ganges meets the sea, falls on which festival day?

It falls on 14 or 15 January, and around 11 million people bathed there in 2024.

Which Indian leader, a self-described sceptic, willed a handful of his ashes to the Ganges?

His will called the river 'the river of India, beloved of her people'.

Which modern Ganges city stands on the site of Pataliputra, capital of the Mauryan Empire?

Buddhist tradition dates its founding to 490 BCE, when King Ajatashatru moved his capital from Rajgir.

What was India's US$226 million river clean-up of 1985-2000, the largest ever attempted, named?

It is widely judged a failure, blamed on corruption, poor planning and a lack of support from religious authorities.

Announced in 2014, which Indian government programme aims to clean and rejuvenate the Ganges?

The UN Environment Programme named it one of ten 'World Restoration Flagship' efforts in 2022.

The National Mission for Clean Ganga chose which Indian comic-book character as its mascot?

The turbaned old man whose brain 'works faster than a computer' has been a comics fixture since 1971.

In November 2008 the Ganges, alone among India's rivers, was given which official designation?

The move created a National Ganga River Basin Authority with wider powers to plan and monitor clean-up measures.

In March 2017 an Indian state high court made headlines by declaring the Ganges what?

Commentators quickly noted the ruling would be almost impossible to enforce across other states.

The combined Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna system ranks where among the world's rivers by average discharge?

Only the Amazon and Congo carry more water on average, and in full flood only the Amazon does.

Bangladesh's name for the main Ganges channel is Sanskrit for which flower?

The word is also a byname of the goddess Lakshmi; the river has eroded away more than 66,000 hectares of land since 1966.

Who was the first European to mention the Ganges in writing?

The Greek envoy to the Mauryan court described a river 30 stadia wide at its source in his Indica.

Which river of Maharashtra is known as the 'Ganges of the South' or Dakshin Ganga?

Legend says the sage Gautama led it to flow through central India as a local Ganges.

What is the highest point in the Ganges drainage basin?

Nine of the world's fourteen 8,000-metre peaks drain into the basin.

Kanpur, on the Ganges, is notorious for river pollution from which industry?

Kanpur and neighbouring Unnao are the basin's main industrial towns.

The Ganges is usually given as roughly how long?

Estimates vary from about 2,300 to 2,700 km depending on which source and mouth are used.

Which botanist first documented the Ganges' freshwater dolphin, in 1801?

Roxburgh and Heinrich Lebeck each described the animal in 1801, and credit has been argued about ever since.

On Ganga Dashahara, a dip in the Ganges is said to wash away how many sins?

The name itself encodes the number: dasha means ten and hara means to destroy.

The sediment the Ganges dumps offshore builds the world's largest example of what feature?

The Bengal Fan alone accounts for 10-20% of the organic carbon buried worldwide.

Which 2007 cyclone damaged around 40% of the Ganges Delta's mangrove forest?

Cyclone Aila followed in 2009, affecting at least 100,000 people.

Which more common species that also swims up the Ganges is Glyphis gangeticus often mistaken for?

Only a handful of true Ganges shark specimens have ever been recorded.

Upstream of Varanasi, the Ganges carries faecal coliform at roughly what multiple of the safe bathing limit?

The city then adds around 200 million litres of untreated sewage a day.

The sacred confluences on the Ganges' Alaknanda headwater are known collectively as what?

They lie in downstream order from Vishnuprayag to the final confluence where the Ganges proper begins.

The Ganges makes an appearance as a playable level in which 1998 video game?

Lara Croft's third outing sends her to India in search of a meteorite artefact.