Facts about The Ganges River
Ganga is a trans-boundary river of Asia which flows through the nations of India and Bangladesh.
The 2,525 km (1,569 mi) river rises in the western Himalayas in the Indian state uttranchal, and flows south and east through the Gangetic Plain of North India into Bangladesh, where it empties into the Bay of Bengal.
Pataliputra, Kannauj, Kara, Kashi, Patna, Hajipur, Munger, Bhagalpur, Murshidabad, Baharampur, Kampilya, and Kolkata are located on its banks.
River Ganga originates from the Gangotri Glacier, on the southern slopes of the Himalayas, which is 14,000 feet above sea level.
River Ganga is about 1557 miles long(2506 km).
The Ganges basin is about 200 to 400 miles (322 to 644 km) wide.
Rivers Bhagirathi and Alaknanda join each other at Devprayag to form River Ganga
Ganga is the home for 140 different species of fish and 90 different species of amphibians, many of which are near extinction today.
In 1896, a British bacteriologist Ernest Hanbury Hankin tested the bacterium Vibrio Cholerae that causes the deadly disease cholera, and found that this bacterium died within three hours when put into the waters of Ganga.
The same bacteria continued to thrive in distilled water even after 48 hours.
The Ganga in Haridwar has shifted from its original course by 500 meters in the past few decades. In Bihar, some parts of the river have shifted more than 2.5 km since 1990
The presence of bacteriophages (viruses that kill bacteria) in the water of the Ganges is considered as the reason behind this quality and its purity.
University of Roorkee’s D.S. Bhargava, an environmental engineer, studied and found that Ganga is the only river in the world that decomposes organic wastes at a rate 15 to 25 times faster compared to other rivers in entire world.
The Ganges river basin is one of the most fertile and densely populated in the world and covers an area of 400 000 sq miles (1 000 000 sq km)