@sarahyltonphoto

I’m honored to share my latest body of work, nearly three years in the making, for the April 2022 issue of @natgeo Magazine. Our story on India’s battle to clean up its holiest river, the Ganges, began in 2019 when I accompanied an expedition made up of scientists, engineers, and support staff supported by @insidenatgeo. The team traveled the full length of the river twice (and I much of it), before and after the monsoon. Researching plastic along one of the most culturally significant rivers in South Asia, the team sought to understand why, how, and what kind of plastic was getting into the Ganges, and eventually flowing into the Indian Ocean. “The Ganges River is one of the world’s largest, worshipped by a billion Hindus as Mother Ganga, a living goddess with power to cleanse the soul. The headwaters emerge from the Gangotri Glacier high in the western Himalaya, just a few miles from Tibet, and then drop down steep mountain canyons to India’s fertile northern plain. There the river meanders east across the subcontinent into Bangladesh, broadening as it absorbs 10 large tributaries. Just after it merges with the Brahmaputra, the Ganges empties into the Bay of Bengal. It’s the world’s third largest freshwater outlet to the ocean, after the Amazon and the Congo. It supports more than a quarter of India’s 1.4 billion people, all of Nepal, and part of Bangladesh…Most of the research about plastic waste has focused on plastic already in the oceans and its potential for harm—it poses a lethal threat to a wide range of wildlife, from plankton on up to fish, turtles, and whales. Less is known about how the waste gets to the ocean. But it’s clear that rivers, especially rivers in Asia, are major arteries” writes Laura Parker. See the link in my bio. A huge thank you to @insidenatgeo for supporting a large chunk of this work, the incredible champion of an editor @dominiqueanneh and all the amazing collaborators @ravimishraindia @dreamersid @shridhar_sudhir @roobaroowalks who were integral to making this work possible with their wisdom and expertise, through a pandemic no less. I’ll be sharing more images over the coming days. Captions are in the comments section.