In a new awareness campaign of its kind, eight well-known women explorers from across the world, are set to embark on a 55-day clean Ganga expedition covering over 2400 kms. It is set to kick off from the source of the river at Gomukh on October 20.
The team that also includes Krushnaa Patil, the youngest Indian mountaineer to have scaled the Everest, is scheduled to follow the course of the river covering the cities of Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi, Patna and conclude near Kolkata in December.
The other members of the team are Ann Bancroft from US (expedition co-leader), liv Arnesen of Norway (expedition co-leader), Olfat Haider (Israel), Cindy Jiaojiao Hu (China), Kim Smith (South Africa) lisa te Heuheu (New Zealand), and Marcia Gutierrez (Chile).
The duo of Arnesen and Bancroft was the first women in history to sail and ski across Antartica. The trek was conducted for 94-days across 2747 kms. The expedition has been organised by the Bancroft-Arnesen Explore (BAE) foundation, under the programme Access Water Expedition. Sources said the purpose of the programme is to raise awareness on Clean Ganga Project by Namami Gange. Other partners include UNESCO, Young Pioneers of China, TERI, Norwegian Embassy, Google amongst others.
The idea is to shed more light on the water and environmental issues plaguing the Ganges River. The team aims at outlining the similarities between issues being faced along the Ganges and those surfacing in other parts of the world. Another important aspect of the trek is to stress on innovative solutions to tackle these issues.
The team-members from different age groups and background working together is symbolic gesture of what people, the world over, with passion can achieve. “We have a long term vision. We hope it turns into a movement. We want young people, from all backgrounds, to come together and to co-operate for solving environmental and world problems. Water is a wonderful way for us to talk about environment. We are excited about journeying down the Ganges. It’s intimidating, we don’t know how it will go,” said the participants.
Further, hundreds of Ganga activists joined hands in mass cleaning drive of the river Ghats across four States on Sunday. The mass cleaning took place at 200 points between Uttarkashi in Uttarakhand and Patna Sahib in Bihar covering two other States.
The drive was organised by Gayatri Pariwar. The objective of the drive was both on cleaning the ‘ghats’ and spreading awareness on keeping the holy river clean. The most active parts of the campaign took place at Rishikesh and Haridwar as well as Allahabad and Varanasi.