Dennison Berwick
A Walk Along The Ganges
language
(Voyage Press Oct. 24, 2009)
An enchanting portrayal of northern India along the banks of her holiest river, stretching from the Bay of Bengal up into the Himalayas.
The pilgrimage took seven months; Dennison Berwick writes, "The idea of walking the length of the Ganga fixed itself in my mind suddenly one morning while gazing over the Nile, but it was several years before I felt myself ready to undertake the journey. My motives and ambitions were mixed. I wanted to make a great walk, to set off with no prospect of ending for months. I wanted to see the land that had fired the British imagination for generations. I wanted to travel at the pace of rural India, where four out of five Indians live, and to walk in the footsteps of the peasants.
And why the Ganga? I was searching for answers to one question: How could a river also be a goddess? For millions of Hindus, the river Ganga is the physical expression of the goddess Ganga; bathing in her waters is both spiritual ritual and necessary ablution. We have learned so well in the West to separate sacred from secular that the very notion of their being indivisible, like the Ganga, seems absurd.
However, the Native Indians of Canada have a saving. ‘Never judge a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins,’ and this was something I took literally. I was determined to wear village clothes, eat local foods, adopt local customs for washing and toilet and as much as possible speak the language. I felt that meeting India's people and walking through her villages and beside her most sacred river was the only way to learn about the country. Perhaps then, I thought, I might begin to understand something of the relationship between the Ganga and her devotees and might find answers to my question.
My walk beside the Ganga was also being used as a money‑raiser by Save the Children Fund in England. 'If you're crazy enough to make the walk, can we use it to raise money for our work in India?' the Fund's head of public relations had asked. Project Ganges was thus born under the direction of my mother, who was vice‑chairman of the Fund's United Kingdom Committee at the time. This aspect of the journey was to become more and more important to me as the walk continued and I saw the conditions of some of the poorest people in India."
The pilgrimage took seven months; Dennison Berwick writes, "The idea of walking the length of the Ganga fixed itself in my mind suddenly one morning while gazing over the Nile, but it was several years before I felt myself ready to undertake the journey. My motives and ambitions were mixed. I wanted to make a great walk, to set off with no prospect of ending for months. I wanted to see the land that had fired the British imagination for generations. I wanted to travel at the pace of rural India, where four out of five Indians live, and to walk in the footsteps of the peasants.
And why the Ganga? I was searching for answers to one question: How could a river also be a goddess? For millions of Hindus, the river Ganga is the physical expression of the goddess Ganga; bathing in her waters is both spiritual ritual and necessary ablution. We have learned so well in the West to separate sacred from secular that the very notion of their being indivisible, like the Ganga, seems absurd.
However, the Native Indians of Canada have a saving. ‘Never judge a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins,’ and this was something I took literally. I was determined to wear village clothes, eat local foods, adopt local customs for washing and toilet and as much as possible speak the language. I felt that meeting India's people and walking through her villages and beside her most sacred river was the only way to learn about the country. Perhaps then, I thought, I might begin to understand something of the relationship between the Ganga and her devotees and might find answers to my question.
My walk beside the Ganga was also being used as a money‑raiser by Save the Children Fund in England. 'If you're crazy enough to make the walk, can we use it to raise money for our work in India?' the Fund's head of public relations had asked. Project Ganges was thus born under the direction of my mother, who was vice‑chairman of the Fund's United Kingdom Committee at the time. This aspect of the journey was to become more and more important to me as the walk continued and I saw the conditions of some of the poorest people in India."
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