Are you stirred? We are sure, listening to two holy words together. It can make anyone stir with the deep desire to travel. We know that you, quietly and surely, have the desire for travel. And it will not be satisfied by just the beauty of the travel destinations alone. There is a feeling, while not necessarily loud, dramatic or shown with smoke or thunder, that makes for a warm, familiar feeling over time. Where you know with certainty that within the lofty, cold mountains of the Himalayas there is something waiting for you for eternity, especially for you, by name, through the morning sunset as seen throughout history. This is not just an adventure but it is a calling. This journey will transform your entire life. It is indeed a journey to the earth’s most beautiful places. Such as, it is also the source of some of the world’s greatest rivers, a birth place of Goddess and also home to gigantic glaciers. This is the place where your heart will experience serendipity. Indeed, a feeling beyond just awe and reverence combined but beyond those two feelings too. You feel like you're at the very origin of everything possible. The name “Ganga” itself makes everyone emotional. For thousands of years, the name itself has represented a deep mythological meaning. It’s more than a name, it’s a source of purification, love and an answered prayer that comes down. The Gaumukh Glacier, the ancient, shrinking tongue of ice in the Garhwal Himalayas where Bhagirathi begins, is precisely the miraculous location where that descent intersects with Mother Earth.Also, did you know that Ganga is one of the scientifically most remarkable rivers on the planet Earth. Research has shown that Ganga’s water known as Gangajal has special natural anti-bacterial and self cleaning properties. That also has a technical reason, it has bacteriophages present in water in high quantities which cannot be found anywhere else. Did you know? That water which is drawn from the river Ganga at its source near Gangotri and Guamukh stored in copper vessels, continues to remain fresh for many years without any treatment or any refrigeration. Ancient wisdom and scientific inquiry, arriving at this conclusion from two opposite ends, have met exactly at this one point: this water is special. This river is special. And its source, the glacier out of which this water originates in the remoteness of the high Himalayas is quite special.
Gangotri, is the place where earth first meets heaven. The glacier lies beyond the town of Gangotri, which is its own world of antiquity and grandeur, which is overwhelming in the ancient sense that places of continuous and genuine holiness can only create. Gangotri is situated at 3100 meters above sea level in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand State in India. It is inside a small narrow valley through which the River Bhagirithi rushes through an ancient Verve gorge. The sound of the river crashing is quite loud through the gorge verve. And because of that, after a period of time the sound will no longer be perceived as sound but rather sound will have become the fundamental frequency of the gorge itself, which is woven into silence and indistinguishable from it.
Gangotri is home to the Gangotri Temple which is painted in white and silver. It is standing tall against the snow capped himalayan ranges, near the river banks. It holds a very deep religious significance through eons of unbroken faith and devotion to it by the pilgrims who file past it each year. It is not the largest temple that anyone will ever see, nor is it the most intricate or the most outstanding in its architectural design. Here you are going to witness a birth. A birth of river to the birth of human soul.
Apart from the first time visitors approach, there is also a mythological tale associated with it. This is an extraordinary tale of devotion and is possibly one of the great human stories. In the dream of love that King Bhagirath had for his ancestors who were subjected to bhakti as a result of passed karma from sixty thousand previous ancestors, he worked tirelessly for many, many lifetimes: he prayed and meditated to Ganga to convince her to descend from her home in the heavens, and free the soul of every ancestor before him by having her sacred water released from the mountain. This was accepted by the goddess on one condition, where Lord shiva was required to collect the river because if he did not receive the force of her descent, she would crush the earth as she fell. To meet this challenge, Lord Shiva extended his matted locks to receive the river and release it gently and gradually upon reaching the earth. This story is not very known and above all visiting the actual place is quite rare too. So, if you get the chance to visit, make sure to put in all your effort and make it happen. The river has carried prayer of a lifetime.
We also have another interesting fact as you go through the Gaumukh. You will come across the preserved himalayan “Gangotri National park”. In 1989, Gangotri National Park was created to protect the source waters of the Bhagirathi River. And adjacent to it are the wild himalayan habitats. It is quite an extensive area covering over 2390 square kilometers in Uttrakashi. This area is very important from both an ecological and an aesthetic standpoint because it represents one of the highest areas on earth where untouched and safe wilderness still remains, making it a unique and living laboratory for studying geology, vegetation ecology, plant taxonomy, etc. used by researchers from all over the globe. This Park is home to the snow leopard, one of the rarest predators of the earth. Apart from it, this national park is also home to the Himalayas black bear, blue sheep, musk deer, the Himalayan Tahr and more than 150 + bird species, including the state bird of Uttrakhand that is “Himalayan Monal”. It is indeed a culmination of Holiness and adventure.