Reflections from the river: Paddling through a climate crisis

In 2017, Shilpika became the first-ever person to stand up paddle the Ganges river in India from source to sea (3000km). The inspiration and motivation for this expedition was to tell the story of climate change from a human perspective—how climate change is more than just carbon—it is health, it’s opportunity, it’s equity, it’s dignity and how it is felt differently across caste, class, gender, faith and political alignment. This expedition is in the Guinness World Records book for the longest ever stand-up paddle journey in history.?

When I first set out to paddle the sacred Ganges—a river revered by hundreds of millions, whilst also being one of the most polluted water bodies in the world—I was prepared for it to be a physical challenge.

Yet as I set off from the river’s source at Gaumukh (or ‘Mouth of the Cow’) to begin my journey, every new day made it clearer and clearer how little I understood the lived experience of climate change by those with the lowest footprint, and with the closest coexistence with nature.??

The source of the Ganges, nestled in the Himalayas, was awe-inspiring. The clear, cold waters flowing from Gaumukh at the foot of the Gangotri Glacier (one of the largest glaciers outside of the polar regions!) felt pristine, untouched by human hands. Up high in the mountains there is immense beauty, but while these glaciers are untouched, they are still affected by human actions and it is hard not to notice that this glacier (and many others around the world) are retreating every year, melting away, and increasing water levels further down.

This glacier is where the river begins—pure, powerful, and full of promise. But it didn’t take long for that sense of purity to slowly fade as I travelled downstream. The Ganges, appreciated for centuries as a symbol of life and holiness, is now a living testament to environmental destruction, reflecting the broader climate crisis: water bodies across the world are choking and ecosystems are collapsing.

As I moved down through the river, I passed small villages and towns where the people’s lives are intimately tied to the river’s health. The Ganges is more than a river—for millions of people, it’s a lifeline. Waste littered the banks, plastic bags floated by: what mattered was survival, and for many, the river was the only source of water, no matter how polluted it had become.

The further I paddled, the more the river changed. The Ganges is a living paradox: a place where life and death, hope and despair, beauty and destruction co-exist so closely it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

In Allahabad, where the Ganges meets its sister river Yamuna and the mythological river Saraswati, we saw the grounds upon which the largest annual congregation of humanity (the Kumbh Mela) takes place.

In Kanpur, a global hub for the leather industry, I found myself paddling next to huge sewage pipes spewing millions of litres of untreated industrial and other waste directly into the river. At one point, the waste was so thick that paddling the water felt like wading through a sea of sludge.?

In Varanasi, the oldest living city in the world, the coexistence of life and death was in sight every single moment.

In the northern state of Bihar, I paddled past massive brick kilns belching black smoke into the sky. The workers who depend on these smokestacks for their livelihoods live in temporary shelters by the riverbanks, breathing in polluted air and drinking contaminated water. It’s a harsh reminder that the climate crisis disproportionately affects those who are already vulnerable and struggling to survive.

Rivers, as critical as they are to the humanity they support, are also a beautiful reminder of biodiversity that they support (we counted over 900 dolphins over the course of the journey).

Meanwhile there were also the buffalos

For these people who live along the Ganges, the changing climate is not an abstract discussion of carbon emissions or melting glaciers. It’s in the shifting seasons, the unreliable monsoons, the streams that flood unpredictably and then run dry when they are needed most. Those with the least power, the least access to resources—are bearing the brunt of a crisis they did not create.?

The Ganges, like so many of our rivers around the world, is more than just water—it’s life. For me now, it’s become a symbol of our global struggle to combat climate change, to protect what we love, and to preserve what remains, and to fight the injustice happening to our environment and these local communities.

Paddling the Ganges was more than a journey. It was a call to action—a reminder that we cannot afford to be passive observers as the world around us changes.?

We must act. We must fight. For the river, for the planet, for ourselves.?

Shilps?

Stay tuned for Chapter 2 from my ‘Reflections from the River’ series.

Map of the Ganges River, India showing some of the aforementioned cities