Bhardwaj spent over three years documenting the journey of the river, travelling 2,510 km, from the Gangotri to the meandering plains of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and West Bengal and finally to the Gangasagar, where the river merges with the Bay of Bengal, and taking over 4,000 photographs on the way. Says Bhardwaj: “I did not want to focus on the usual destinations like Rishikesh, Haridwar and Varanasi. Instead, I wanted to trace the lives of the millions who live by the river, the devout travellers. The effort was not to make a social statement but to project an overall picture.”

The income-tax commissioner of Mumbai, Vijay Singal, has provided the text, complementing the images, while Amitabh Bachchan has written the foreword. Bhardwaj says that it was during discussions with friend Singal that the idea of a coffee-table book germinated. “I took the camera and set out to translate that dream into a reality,” he says.