Raymonde
1 answer
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What's your impression of Ganges River of India?

I've always had this respect for it based on all the good books and poems,yet recently I read from somebody's published travel log that it's not very sanitary with people brushing teeth and open air cremation right on the bank,I read some comments and some say it's like open sewer.

Now I am a bit confused since I've never been there?

What's your experience if you've been there and seen it? 

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Orna
39 answers
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It's all true.

It's not very sanitary with people brushing teeth and open air cremation right on the bank. It is somewhat like an open sewer. I had the plesent chance of watching a body floating on the water. I'ts dirty and it's busy and it's not an easy place to visit (don't remember the name of the town I've been to).

However - I still respect it, as it is a holy place for some. It looks the way it looks, and certain things are beeing done there (such as cremation) because of its holyness.

 

 
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oren
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The sights of rotten bodies floating in the river and the smell of the cremation experiences I'll never forget.



As a westerner I was disgusted by the people who were having their daily bath in the same place where a dead body was floating just two minutes ago, but I guess that's what anthropologists call 'cultural relativeness" .

Varanasi was my last stop in India before crossing to Nepal and I felt that I have to figure it out. I had some long conversations with locals. Life and death are both particles of a huge cycle for them. Death isn't perceived as something bad or "dirty" , It's almost "part of life", therefore there is no problem with bathing or brushing your teeth in the river, which perceived buy westerners as a sewer. 
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saja
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They say a picture is better then a thousand words, no?

Take a look at this video, I think it's inline with what the people here said before...

(Warning: dead guy seen in the movie)

 
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Syco Baba
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The total length of the Ganges river is 2,510 km! (1,557 miles), so to say it is all an open sewer is ignorance.

Only a small part of the river, flowing in the town of Varanasi, is really filthy and ugly, but the rest of the river, especially in the north, is clean and very beautiful.
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bergerui
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Your own personal jesus

I have spent three and a half weeks in Varanasi and it was amazing !


varanasi sits on the Ganges and on it's banks bodies are cremated , it is a very holy beautiful and filthy city , but that is the origin of he magic. about sanitation, well it is highly polluted by human remains and the city's sewage (non industrial) , but it is a mighty river and people bath in it every day ( I have some backpacker friends that washed in it ), though it does not smell bad and you do not have to enter it's waters to enjoy it's magic.
If you travel to India you must visit Varanasi , do not be afraid of the city's filth it's only an obstacle for a western eye.
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I have bathed in the Ganges. I have drunk water from the Ganges.  I do not recommend this. I lived on the banks of the Ganges off and on for 7 years. Like everything you experience in India, it is

simultaneously both horrible and wonderful. The ceremony of death, the bodies floating, the sewage, the beauty of it all. Up north, north of Rishikesh, the Ganges freezingly, clearly, beats against boulders. Down south it is powerful and capricious. It is worth experiencing the whole of the Ganges. There is nothing sanitary about any of the rivers in the US, either. Giardia, e-coli, etc. All campers know to purify the water before drinking. 
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