He walked the length of India’s Ganges river and was shocked at what he found
- Siddharth Agarwal spent two years trekking along the nation’s holiest river and everywhere he went he saw the impact of climate change and human interference
- The activist has set up a foundation to document environmental issues and intends to walk along many more of India’s rivers
India’s rivers are an important part of the country’s national identity and nurture millions of lives along their banks.
They have also bewitched Siddharth Agarwal, an aerospace engineer and environmentalist who has been walking along those rivers recording the stories of the marginalised people and communities caught in their ebb and flow, his purpose being to affect policymaking.
Agarwal belongs to a middle-class family of the Marwari ethnic group, which originates from India’s Rajasthan region. For him to have chosen activism after gaining a degree from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur was an unusual move.
“When I was in college, I started long-distance cycling just to improve my physical stamina and endurance. I cycled from Mumbai to Kolkata [around 1,900km, or 1,200 miles] in 2014, and as we were travelling, I told my friend that I wanted an even slower form of travel next time, where I could connect with strangers,” he says.
“I started off by walking for about 400km in Rajasthan, the state where I hail from, to better understand its people, food and culture as well as its geography. I met people in small villages, interacted with locals, and got a sense of my family history.”
