Kolkata, West Bengal 15^th December 2016

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Had to get up horribly early to meet my car and driver to go to Gangasagar. Gangasagar is at the southern tip of an island in the estuary of the Hooghly River about 110km south of Kolkata. The place has big significance for Hindus and marks the end of the Ganga. The estuary is about 35km across at this point.

80kms south from Kolkata, the road ended and I had to get a passenger ferry to Sagar Island. The crossing was a slow struggle for 3kms into a fast flowing flood tide of murky water. The ferry was one of those that looks like the ones you see capsized on the TV with hundreds reported drowned. I could see only half a dozen life-belts hanging up. As there were a couple of hundred pilgrims and islanders on the ferry I guess the less well-fed ones wouldn’t have made it if there had been problems. I’d hired a guide in Kolkata for this leg as I found my Bengali to be a bit rusty. He was a young lad on his 24^th birthday who had kittens on the ferry as he couldn’t swim and his pandit had earlier told him he would die in a river. He’d never been to Gangasagar before so there wasn’t much guiding but he was useful for negotiating for tea and transport. The next car took us the last 30kms down the island to the beach.

White folks like me were few and far between there. In fact there was only me so I got a lot of attention from the beggars. The sadhus that infest this kind of place are no better and usually expect a reward just for turning out in hi-visibility clothing. The main temple here is Kapli Muni which celebrates some mythical Hindu violence related to the origins of Ganga. I had some offerings of flowers blessed for the memsahib in memory of her mother and got an orange stripe on my forehead, called a tikli, in return. I was on my way to becoming a sadhu.

I had a paddle in the Bay of Bengal to complete my Ganges journey. Reaching the sea, to a stretch of water that I have sailed across before, somehow didn’t feel much like an ending. More like the start of something else.

M