I think the Nile and the Ganges are true nation builders. They have created countries and great civilizations. I think they should be worshipped as gods and symbols of nature - nurturing us humans and allowing us to create our civilizations.

Too bad we don’t seem to care much about our life givers. The Ganges is incredibly polluted in some areas and therefore kills people and animals alike. What a shame.

From Wikipedia:

The Ganges River (Ganga in Indian languages; Ganges is the Latin form) is the major river in northern India and Bangladesh. The river has a long history of reverence in India and is often called the ‘holy Ganga’. It originates as the Bhagirathi from the Gangotri Glacier in the Uttaranchal Himalayas and joins the Alaknanda near Deoprayag to form the Ganga. Then on, the Ganga flows across the large plains of North India (called the Gangetic Plains) and empties into the Bay of Bengal after dividing up into many distributaries. One of them is the Hoogli River near Kolkata, another major distributary being the Padma River that enters Bangladesh and merges with Jamuna River, a branch of the Brahmaputra River.

The total length of the river is about 2,510 km (1,557 mi). One of the densest human population belts on earth is built around the Ganga. The region encompassing the delta near the Bay of Bengal coast is known as The Sundarbans (Beautiful Forests) — a region of thick mangrove forests, and one of the major habitats of the Royal Bengal tiger.

The Ganges Basin is incredibly fertile and, at present, about one in every 12 people in the world (8.5%) live in its catchment area. However, due to this incredible concentration of population, pollution and destruction of habitats is increasing at an alarming rate in the region. The Yamuna River — a major river in its own right, and nearly as sacred — is a tributary of the Ganga, and their confluence is near what is the site of the traditional holy Hindu city of Prayag, now known as Allahabad.

Two species of dolphin can be found in the Ganges, the Ganges River Dolphin and the Irrawaddy Dolphin. The Ganges is also notable in that it contains a rare species of freshwater shark, Glyphis gangeticus about which little is known.