Inside India’s Gargantuan Mission to Clean the Ganges River

In the mornings in Varanasi, the air on the banks of the Ganges fills with the scent of burning bodies. On the steps of the Manikarnika ghat—the holiest of the city’s stepped riverbanks, upon which Hindu dead are cremated—the fires are already lit, and mourners assemble by the hundred to accompany their loved ones at the end. Pyres of sandalwood (for the rich) and mango wood (for everyone else) are already burning; on one, a corpse wrapped in white is visible in the flames.

Down at the river, where I’m watching from a boat, some families are engaged in the ceremonial washing of their dead, the corpses shrouded in white

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