So here I am, ten thousand feet above sea level, looking up at a mountain that rises the same height again, and more. North, beyond the impossible peaks of Nanda Kot and Nanda Devi, is an unimaginable range of mountains stretching far into Tibet. The glaciers on the flanks of these giants trickle meltwater into the streams that carve the ravines we have travelled through and bring water, life and a waste disposal system to towns like Bageshwar. The valleys allow roads to be built into the mountains and with the roads comes trade and transport. Lorries and taxis and motorbikes: labouring; wheezing and honking, bring in the raw materials for the burgeoning towns and villages but off the road, in mountain villages, the tiny populations cling on to an older, quieter way of life. The mountain torrents, bubbling and braided join together to form rivers: Saryu, Alaknanda, Nandakini and many others that find their way to the vast plain that lies to the east of Delhi and merge to form the Ganges, “Ganga”, one of the world’s great rivers.





The Ganges is also one of the world’s most pressured rivers; according to Wikipedia the hundred million hectares of the Gangetic Plain support one of the highest densities of humans on the planet. The pressure of these numbers pushes, like waves on a shore, against the Himalayan barrier and as the tide rises, rivulets of settlement spread up the valleys and lap against the steep mountain slopes. The population tripled in the first 80 years of the 20th century and at the same time the hunger for energy and raw materials to feed the Indian economy also grew. Quarries and hydro-electric plants are spreading and villagers take their livestock high into the foothills to find forage, burning the pine woods for a flush of green grass. Even at 3000m you are likely to find a woman up a tree with a sickle, collecting fresh oak leaves for the cattle or lichens to make henna.

At the furthest point of our journey a billion people are at my back, and there’s hardly anyone in front of me. Many of the world’s wonders and contradictions are squeezed into the four hundred or so kilometers between here and Delhi. Now there's something to see!