Tripping Down the Ganga

by Siddharth Kapila

English 440 pages 1 edition

‘To read Tripping Down the Ganga is to stream down Hinduism’s holiest river—the lifewater of India, the mirror of our immemorial civilization—on the raft of Kapila’s immensely readable prose.’—Shashi Tharoor ‘A captivating journey through spiritual India, weaving together travel tales along the revered river. From Kedarnath to Ganga Sagar, Kapila explores the diversity of religious practice, blending personal anecdotes with deep cultural insights. His narrative is both authentic and engaging, with a dash of humour thrown in… In the chapters on Varanasi, I almost had a small pilgrimage myself… [A] beautiful story worth reading.’—Prof Vishwambhar Nath Mishra, Mahant, Sankat Mochan Hanuman Mandir, Varanasi ‘Even as he rescues Hinduism from the quicksand of bigotry, superstition and political appropriation, Kapila shows us how religion provides answers to questions both essential and existential: Who are we? What are we doing here? Is there life after death? This moving travel memoir brings alive India’s pilgrimage sites for believers who never struggle with doubt, and for sceptics who often struggle with faith. Kapila’s lucid prose speaks for us all.’—Shreevatsa Nevatia, author of How to Travel Light: My Memories of Madness and Melancholia As a schoolboy in the early 1990s, Siddharth Kapila began accompanying his devout and intrepid mother on numerous yaatras to sacred sites along the Ganga. In 2015, now a more sceptical young man, he decides to visit them on his own. And over the next seven years, as he journeys from Gaumukh, the source of the river in the high Himalayas, to Ganga Sagar, where it meets the Bay of Bengal, he realizes that he isn’t simply exploring his mother’s faith—the faith of tens of millions of Hindus—but also his own. Up in Gangotri, he meets renunciant babas who share with him their life stories and their meagre food. In Kedarnath, a sadhu tells him how the Shiva temple miraculously survived the devastating floods of 2013. At Badrinath, he attends a family friend’s marriage to Vishnu, to undo a defect in her horoscope. Walking from Haridwar to Rishikesh with the kanwariyas, many of whom have travelled hundreds of kilometres on foot, he sheds his disdain for these young men often accused of bullying and aggression. In Allahabad—now Prayagraj—he tries to parse facts about the Naga sadhus from legend as he watches them perform astonishing feats of strength. Ancient Varanasi offers diverse experiences, from a bhang-induced revelry on Mahashivratri to conversations on the occult with Aghoris, who tell him why they sometimes feed on the dead. In between, he visits Bodh Gaya, where he prays to Shiva at the Mahabodhi Temple dedicated to Buddha. Moving back and forth in time, Kapila reflects on the politics—and economics—of religion, the hypocrisy and bigotry of some of his fellow pilgrims, the opportunism of some sadhus and the integrity and compassion of others. And he reflects, too, on the resilience of people’s devotion, the great diversity of Hinduism, and the mighty pull of the Ganga, which keeps bringing him back to itself no matter how hard he reasons against the faith of his birth. As much an entertaining travelogue as an introspective memoir, Tripping Down the Ganga is an unprecedented book on the everyday Hinduism of believers and non-believers alike.