Exploring East India’s Mighty Brahmaputra River

From its origins near Manasarovar Lake and Mount Kailas, the world’s 9th largest river flows 1,900 miles through Tibet, into India, then Bangladesh, to the Bay of Bengal. Join our correspondent and writer as they meet people of various faiths and ethnicities along the India portion, all of whom view the abundance-giving and sometimes destructive river with great devotion.

By Ellen Coon, Nepal 
All Photos: Thomas Kelly

A wide silver ribbon glittered beneath us as we flew into Dibrugarh, in Northeast India’s Assam province—the mighty Brahmaputra River. “We call it the Brahmaputra because it is the son of Lord Brahma,” explained the young Assamese woman sitting next to me. 

Photojournalist Thomas Kelly and I were interested in the Brahmaputra as one of four sacred rivers that emanate from Mt. Kailash, the mountain in western Tibet that is holy to four religions. In January 2025, we followed the river from where it enters India in northern Arunachal Pradesh, to Guwahati, about 180 miles downstream in Assam, where it exits into Bangladesh. It is known as the Tsangpo in Tibet, Siang when it enters Arunachal Pradesh and Brahmaputra from the confluence in Assam of the Siang, Lohit and Dibang. We flew in from Kolkata to Dibrugarh, Assam’s northernmost airport.

All along the way, we met people living next to the river who consider the Brahmaputra to be a Divine Being, a living Deity to be respected. This reverence for rivers, which has always been the norm in India, is now being tested by increasing economic exploitation and pollution of rivers, including the Brahmaputra. This is much in the news these days due to large-scale hydroelectric dams planned on both the Indian and Chinese sides of the border. We wondered, how exactly do people experience the river as sacred? And what could be lost when a river is viewed as a commodity to be turned into money?

Our River Pilgrimage

We arrived on January 14, which happened to be the traditional birthday of the Brahmaputra. It is Makar Sankranti, the first day of the holy month of Magh, when pilgrims and saints from all over India come to bathe in the Lohit River at Brahmakund, in eastern Arunachal Pradesh. In mythic time, Lord Brahma, the Creator, gave a son to the Himalayan rishi Santanu and his wife, a beautiful celestial apsara (nymph) named Amogha. Instead of conceiving Lord Brahma’s child in human form, Amogha gave birth to a divine water being whom she put safely down as a lake, called Brahmakund. Later, an avatar of Vishnu named Parashuram came with an axe and sliced open the bank, releasing the son of Brahma into a roaring torrent. 

The Brahmaputra’s origin story has multiple strands that come together, diverge and reunite—just like the river itself. Look at a map of Arunachal Pradesh, and you’ll see that three major tributaries come together to form the Brahmaputra: the Lohit, in eastern Arunachal, the Dibang, and to the west, the Siang, each fed by innumerable named rivers and streams. They merge near Sadiya, in upper Assam, to form the Brahmaputra, often referred to as “the braided river.” We followed the Siang because it is the continuation of the Yarlung Tsangpo, originating near Mt. Kailash and flowing due east across Tibet before it makes a dramatic turn into Arunachal Pradesh.

Heading North

On the first day, we drove 25 miles northeast over a flat floodplain from Dibrugarh until we came to the Bogibeel Bridge, which would take us over the Brahmaputra and into Arunachal Pradesh. We stopped before crossing the bridge to marvel at it and the vast expanse of river it spans. It’s a new bridge, opened at the end of 2018, and at 3.1 miles is the longest combined road and rail bridge in India. Normally the river is about three quarters of a mile wide under the bridge, but during monsoon the entire 3.1-mile width is flowing water. Muted shades of sand and steel, pewter and stone shimmered to the horizon, as though we were in a wet desert. The river was huge.

Along with the Bogibeel Bridge, great changes are coming to this remote, sparsely populated area—part of a national project of strategic importance to open the Northeast to trade, development and population flows. As we drove north toward the border with China, the construction of a four-lane highway was ripping apart the thick forests. Many times, we waited for an hour or more, as dynamite blasted the hillsides and hundreds of men from other parts of India drove massive earth-moving equipment. 

While we chatted with occupants of stopped vehicles, we met all different kinds of people. Arunachal Pradesh and Assam are ethnically and culturally diverse. There are over 26 tribes in the area, along with Assamese, Nepali, Tibetan and Bengali settlers, to name only a few. “We call ourselves tarkari, like a mixed vegetable curry,” one man told us. “A little bit of every kind of vegetable makes it tasty!” We encountered religious diversity as well, meeting Hindus, Tibetan and Tai Buddhists, Christians, Muslims and animists, who rather than emphasizing their differences, identified with this place they shared, most importantly the beautiful and powerful river that runs through it. 

Though they look forward to economic benefits, most of the people we met worry about how dams and other development projects will affect the Brahmaputra. As we looked at the bridge, Jyoti Pego, a Hindu from the Mishing tribe, told us fish stocks were already decreasing in the river. But even if his people left their traditional occupations of fishing and ferrying, their “soul” centered on the river; their cultural and spiritual identity would remain inseparable from “Our Lord Brahmaputra.”

We spent our first night in Pasighat, in Arunachal Pradesh, about 125 kilometers from the Assam border. Our lodge was right above the Siang, the major tributary of the Brahmaputra, which originates in Tibet as the Tsangpo. Walking down a sandy path through elephant grass early the next morning, we emerged to a wonderland of gem-colored boulders—purple, jade, maroon and pink. Up here, the river was different, fast and eager, rushing around rocks, often colored a mineral green from glacier melt. Steep hillsides were covered with wild banana trees and, farther up, old-growth forests with large numbers of unique species. Arunachal is one of the world’s biodiversity banks. During the two-day journey north to Yingkiong and then Tuting with the river beside us, a powerful vitality made itself felt. That palpable vitality of the natural world was described in religious terms by the people we met, all along the river, whether Hindus or adherents of other faiths.

Hindu poet Rabindranath Tagore, who won the Nobel Prize in 1913, wrote, “Indian civilization has been distinctive in locating its source of regeneration, material and intellectual, in the forest…India’s best ideas have come where man was in communion with trees and rivers.”

Into the Heart of the World

Surrounded by an abundant, pristine landscape, Tuting is the gateway into a sacred geography that, until recently, could only be reached on foot. On the eastern flank of the Himalayas, Hindus call it a primordial manifestation of Adi Shakti, or Divine Mother. According to Tibetan Buddhists, this is a beyul (a hidden holy land) called Pemakö, located partly in Tibet and partly in Arunachal Pradesh. And our host in Tuting, Gelong Medo, an Adi man in his seventies, told us that according to his Adi Donyi Polo religion, the forests, mountains and the rivers up here are alive, sentient beings who birthed the Adi people.

Gelong Medo lives with his wife and 102-year-old mother, down the street from a large Hindu temple. Also nearby are a Tibetan monastery, a Catholic church and a long-established Indian Army outpost. We stayed in a cement hostel he had built in front of his comfortable wooden house surrounded by lush gardens of vegetables and greens, banana and tangerine trees, a pigpen and a chicken coop. Adis are subsistence people blessed by plentiful food from small plots, the rivers and forests, he said.

Our guide offered us pancakes made with white flour, peanut butter and jam. “Eat that, and you’ll get sick,” Gelong told us. “Eat this,”—he handed us plates of steamed fibrous roots with a chutney made of fresh cilantro, onions and lemons, all from his garden—“and you’ll be strong!”

A little way up the road, we encountered another young man, who was shooting birds. He told us that since Adi were created by forest Deities, “we need wild food.”

Soon, the road narrowed. Following the river, we passed several small Adi villages with dense forests on either side of the road—Jedo, Kuging, Yortung—before we reached Mankota, in the Upper Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh, close to the border between India and China. The village was spread out over an open area of fields on either side of the river, punctuated by clumps of bamboo and fruit trees.

Just before we reached Mankota, we stopped at a Tibetan monastery, where we met Rinpoche Urgyen Phuntsok, a reincarnated lama who usually lives in California. He explained to us that we were entering a secret realm known in Tibetan Buddhism as a beyul, a hidden Himalayan valley where Tibetan Buddhist teachings are concealed to be discovered in the future. It is both a place and a state of mind, accessible only by perseverance. Beyuls are associated with Guru Padmasambhava, the 8th century Indian yogi and tantric master revered by Tibetans as “the second Buddha.” 

In this area, he said, three holy mountains give rise to three holy rivers, which come together, conveying potent blessings, at the base of the hill called Devakota. Devakota can also be called Devikota, he continued, because it is a female power spot, and for centuries has attracted wandering yogins, whose meditation is charged by the divine feminine energy in its caves. This is the Hindu view of Devikota, and, as is common in such sacred sites, has been adopted by Buddhists largely unchanged except for the overlay of Guru Padmasambhava.

In Mankota, we stayed with Dato Khampa, a lady in late middle age who identified as—and spoke—Tibetan, even though she had been born in Mankota and lived there all her life. Adi and Tibetans have long relationships based on trade, with waves of Tibetan migration into this border region. Dato lived in one of three wooden houses in her compound, with a big hearth for cooking and an orange cat who liked to sit in her lap. Her second husband stayed in a separate house a short walk away, while the third structure held a shrine room and an outer room, with a portrait of her first husband, who had been killed in the 1962 Sino-Indian war. 

In the morning we walked four miles through fields, over a river, and up a forested hillside to Devakota. Our guide, Alister, said, “You have no idea how remote this place really is—always has been, until the road and, I guess, cell phones. Until recently, you had to walk four or five days from Tuting, carrying everything—let alone if you were coming from Tibet or Bhutan.” 

Halfway up the hill, we heard voices and came upon a wooden homestead carved out of the forest. There we met a remarkable woman, Ujjen Chochi, who was married to the caretaker of the Buddhist shrines on Devakota, and, it turned out, was Dato’s niece. Holding my hand to help me past the rough spots, she took us on a path lined with prayer flags to Devikota’s most important holy place—a cave that was the womb of Dorje Phagmo, or Vajravarahi. “Dorje Phagmo is Adi Shakti, the Mother of Guru Padmasambhava and all Buddhas,” Ujjen Chochi said. 

Inside, the walls of the cave oozed a moist, reddish substance, which we applied to our foreheads as a tika, or mark of blessing. Droplets formed and fell one at a time off the end of a stalactite into a tiny plastic jug, for us to put on our tongues. When I remarked on the tridents outside the cave, Ujjen Chochi answered that Hindus come here on pilgrimage to worship Divine Mother, too. The trident is the symbol of Lord Siva. She told me that she has felt safe in the jungle ever since she saw the pawprint of a leopard, signifying the Goddess Durga or Parvati’s protection. The hill was dotted with other caves, often occupied by Saivite saints, she said, for meditation and austerities.

Ujjen Chochi said that Devikota was like Sanjivani Hill, because rare medicinal plants grew here, including the plant that Lord Hanuman brought to revive Lakshmana when he was wounded during the epic battle of the Ramayana. The hilltop shrines, though, were Tibetan Buddhist, with a large new cement lakhang (shrine) under construction, with some workers from as far away as Nepal. In front of the shrine, silk scarves and flowers had been offered to oddly shaped stones, some held in a cement base. These were terma, or treasure stones. Terma are teachings concealed for future times by Guru Padmasambhava in different ways, often in rocks or caves. These can only be discovered by rare, adept “treasure revealers” (terton), who sometimes find the stone before the teaching is ripe to emerge. 

Hearing some huffing and puffing, we saw a group of Tibetan students who had come from Tuting, jogging around the lakhang with some of the heavier stones in their arms. “Increases merit!” one called back over his shoulder, in English.

At Singa, the road ends, just a few miles from the border with China. From Singa, pilgrims may walk for several days to the three holy mountains in the area: Padma Shri, Citta Puri and Riwo Tala. We came to know that a few years ago Adi people removed a large golden statue of Chenrezig that Tibetans had erected on one of the mountains. Interestingly, this incident occurred because of a subtle difference in how Tibetan Buddhists and Adi view the mountain, which both agree is sacred. For the Buddhists, the mountain is an auspicious dwelling place for an abstract divine being; for the Adi, the mountain itself is the divine being. 

Selon Mello, 21, a college student at home for his winter break, explained that each mountain and river is an individual Deity, as unique as a person; its divinity can’t be abstracted from its physical form. “The mountain is the Owner,” he said. “The Owner of Itself. Don’t we have to ask Its permission before we do something that affects it?” 

This story brings to light an interaction repeated throughout the Himalayas. It is based on a narrative of how Guru Padmasambhava has “subdued” the local Deities of place. Then follows triumphal Tibetan Buddhist architecture that can cover entire hilltops with monumental statues, temples and monasteries. 

Hinduism is local, and in these holy places, we saw small and simple Hindu shrines, mostly to Lord Siva, that seemed to be a part of the landscape without trying to dominate it, seeing Deity as immanent in, not in conflict with, the natural world.

Returning Downstream

Having reached the northernmost portion of the river in India, we headed back to our starting point at Dibrugarh to explore the immense river’s southern reaches. A gateway stands on the highway between Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, but it’s hardly necessary. The landscape flattened almost immediately once we crossed back into Assam, the road dusty with fields alongside. Temples began to appear more frequently. Census data claims that less than a third of the population of Arunachal Pradesh identifies as Hindu, while in Assam it’s closer to two thirds or more. 

We stopped at a vivid Hanuman temple, to be greeted by Pooja Singh, who told us that her father-in-law had constructed the temple after being ordered to do so in a dream. He was a Bihari migrant to Assam who had worked as a healer, she said, using massage and ayurvedic medicines to cure the sick; but the real healing came from his devotion (bhakti) to Lord Hanuman, who bestows physical health and power on those who serve Him faithfully. Those he had cured still come from all over Assam to worship at the temple, converts not to a different religion, but to a Deity-focused Hinduism more typical of the rest of India.

Majuli Island

We were on our way to Majuli Island, in the middle of the Brahmaputra, where the river protects a distinctly Assamese form of Hinduism. At Nemati ghat, near the town of Jorhat, we inched our vehicle onto a motorized ferry crowded with two cars, lots of motorcycles, and more people than seemed possible. As we leaned against the railing, watching the water slip past, the man next to us explained that he belongs to one of the sattras (religious centers) on Majuli, one that preserves both wooden masks and illuminated manuscripts of Krishna’s life story that are centuries old. Sattras are intentional communities founded by the Assamese Vaishnavite saint Sankardeva, who started an egalitarian Hindu reform movement in the 16th century called Ekasarana. Some are celibate and others are family lineages, but they all focus on simple devotional worship of Krishna. The sattras and the namghars, community halls of worship in every village, emphasize the arts, especially religious dance-dramas. (See Hinduism Today, July 2017 issue.)

Jyoti Sharma, our host on Majuli, had danced the role of Krishna for over a decade in his youth in these village plays. He said, “Krishna is all about emotion, about feeling, about love, about playfulness, like a little child. So our prayer is with art, singing and dancing. When they would paint my body blue, I would feel something inside myself very special.”

Majuli Island is itself something very special. It is the largest inhabited fresh-water river island in the world, a fluvial island made entirely of silt and sediment deposited by the Brahmaputra. It has 144 villages and 150,000 residents. The river’s currents, velocity and volume are constantly changing; it snatches away a big bite of land from one shoreline, only to deposit it on another. Little sandbars and islets around Majuli appear and disappear from one year to the next. The island is less a fixed landform than a moment in the river’s continuous act of creation. Despite the Indian government’s efforts to stabilize the banks with sandbags and other measures, Majuli Island has eroded to less than half its size, from 480 square miles in the 19th century to less than 193 square miles today. Unpredictable but regular floods cover the roads, enter houses or wash them away entirely. Wouldn’t people living near such a violent and mercurial force fear the Brahmaputra and dread its moods? 

We visited Begenati Sattra for a delicious vegetarian lunch, cooked almost entirely from produce grown in the sattra’s fields. Farmer Ritu Katonia told us that since its founding in the 17th century, the sattra had been forced to move and rebuild twice, after floods not only obliterated its buildings but dissolved its land. But still, he loves and reveres the Brahmaputra as a Deity. “Brahmaputra is our Father, just like Siva,” he explained. “He gives equally to everyone.” The floods drop rich silt on the fields, making them so fertile they support an unusual diversity of organically grown crops and vegetables with no other inputs needed. 

Tending the fields with love is part of his religious practice, the farmer continued. Even though the sattra’s daily and yearly schedule is organized around the worship of Krishna, the members worship other Deities as well. “I say a prayer to Mother Earth at dawn every day. Earth is part of Lord Brahma’s holy Creation (Srishti), and so is our Lord Brahmaputra. It is our duty to care.” 

Near Salmora, at the southern end of Majuli, we saw several mud kilns in which pots were being fired, and a little farther down the road, met a family of potters. Atul Bora told us the Brahmaputra’s divinity infuses the clay dug from its banks. They offer puja to the river and keep a lamp burning while collecting clay, and the vessels they make—including diyas, lamps and yogurt-offering pots—are especially for temple use.

“People think we fear the floods, but actually, we love them,” he said. “The floods are when Mahababu Brahmaputra, our Mighty Father Lord Brahmaputra, lavishes gifts on us. The flood brings whole trees and big fish that we can sell for a lot of money. Wherever Our Lord washes over us, He renews our gardens and restocks our fishponds. If He should take our house, he has already helped us to get what we need to build another.” 

Another woman laughed when I asked if she was afraid when the river flooded her house. “Why should I be afraid of Our Lord? If the water rises up to my knees while I’m eating my rice, that’s nice, I can just lower my hand to clean it! I don’t even have to get up.”

A community health worker, Jadu Moni Hazorika, reminded us that not only people depend upon Our Lord Brahmaputra—He supports whole communities of fish, birds and animals. Those living on outlying ephemeral islands made of silt deposits, called chapori, are used to seeing river dolphins playing in the water, and herds of elephants and rhinos swimming from one island to another to graze. “We all pray to the river, He is a God,” he said. “Not just people. Every living thing, praying in its own way.”

Kaziranga 

After we left Majuli on another ferry, our next stop was 62 miles downriver, at Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve—a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985, and home to the world’s largest population of one-horned rhinoceros, along with tigers, elephants, wild water buffalo and great flocks of migratory birds. Here, extraordinary biodiversity flourishes on a floodplain created by the Brahmaputra’s restless wandering: 31 miles of the river’s southern bank and more than 386 square miles of wetlands, grasslands for grazing and forest sustained by its annual floods. 

We explored this part of the Brahmaputra on elephants, by jeep and by boat. Usually, one must strain to catch a glimpse of a rhinoceros; in Kaziranga, there were dozens in plain view at once, standing as placidly as cows, their heads down munching the rich grass.

We met two farmers on adjoining plots on the north bank of the river, at Golaghat-Bokakhat. One, Kiran Phukan, showed us the government-funded solar panels that drove his irrigation pump. The other, Imran Ali, waved his hand over extensive rice fields shimmering with water and vegetable plots; some he owns, others he leases. A mixed group of workers was planting watermelon seeds in sand-filled cups. He told us that growing food was a way to restore his community. “Boys are going far away to work at a low job for money. Religion is neglected, family is destroyed, boy loses his identity. Why not come home to farm, feed the whole family and sell some for money, too?” Floods fifteen feet deep fertilized the fields, he said, and continued, “Brahmaputra River makes every Assamese rich. I love my Brahmaputra, see, he is God, son of Brahma.” Since Imran Ali’s name indicated he was a Muslim, we found this a remarkable testament to how the river brings diverse communities together. 

Healthy biodiversity and cultural diversity feed each other. Assam has been home to several Hindu reform movements. While we were returning from the farms, we passed a saintly old man with four bright green bottle gourds propped on a bench for sale. He was ninety years old. He turned out to be the father of Kiran Phukan, one of the farmers we’d met, and he led us to their simple home. Near the house was a separate little prayer house, which, inside, was spare to the point of severity, furnished just with a tiny altar with no icon, an offering lamp and a clock. He told us that he followed the Krishnaguru sect of Ekasarana Dharma, a more recent tributary branching off the headwaters of the Assamese Vaishnavite bhakti tradition started by Sankardeva and his disciple, Mahadab, on Majuli during the 16th century. 

We sat with him in his prayer house in silence first, then as he began to chant “Jai Krishnaguru! Krishnaguru Prabhu, Krishnaguru, Krishnaguru, Jai Krishnaguru!” He explained that God is inside each person, to be met through silent meditation timed by the clock, twice a day. In the prayer house, we bow to one another, in recognition of the divinity we all embody.

Siva and Shakti Everywhere

Throughout our journey, people in India’s Northeast saw the pairing of Siva and Shakti manifested in the natural world, even in the absence of temples. The many major temples that do exist are almost all on the banks of the Brahmaputra. One lovely example we heard about is an ancient shrine built so that the river washes the Lingam inside during the monsoon, so that the son of Brahma worships Lord Siva when the Brahmaputra’s waters rise.

There’s a long story in Assam of a bloody battle between Siva and Krishna at Tezpur, which ends amicably with the two Gods declaring the whole thing to have been a misunderstanding. In that story, the son of Brahma is present, but doesn’t take sides. We ended our Brahmaputra journey with a trip to two major Siva/Shakti temples in Guwahati.

The Umananda temple sits on a rocky outcropping known as Peacock Island in the middle of the Brahmaputra. As we got off the ferry, we met a Nepali family who told us this is the place where Lord Siva and His consort, the Goddess Parvati, were married. Parvati is a form of Devi/Durga and the reincarnation of Siva’s first wife, Sati Devi. For many Hindus, Siva and Parvati, with Their sons Lord Ganesha and Karttikeya model the perfect family. 

At dawn on our last morning, we descended into the inner sanctum of the Kamakhya Temple, which overlooks the river at a Shakti Peeth, or female power spot, where a piece of Sati Devi’s body dropped to earth. Out of 51 Shakti Peeths in India, Kamakhya is said to be one of the four most powerful. A seeping spring wells up in a dark cave; priests told us that one sip can manifest your heart’s deepest wish. But Kamakhya’s most powerful blessings are conveyed by the Brahmaputra. Once each year, during the full moon of June/July, pilgrims gather to bathe at the place where water from the spring flows into the Brahmaputra.

We had followed the Brahmaputra from Adi Shakti’s unadorned cave to an elaborate temple complex built over Her spring; from slim headwaters to one of the mightiest rivers in South Asia, and indeed the world. Only the Ganges and Indus rival its cultural and ecological importance, but the Brahmaputra is the widest, the deepest and the most forceful. 

Perhaps that is why everyone we talked with mentioned that the Brahmaputra is one of only two male rivers in India (nobody could remember the other one; apparently a likely candidate is the Son River, a tributary of the Ganga). When I asked why this river is male, it was because He behaves like a king or a landlord—lavish in generosity, unpredictable, violent in anger; creative and destructive by equal measure. People revere the river as a God because He cannot be controlled; His agency exceeds that of humans. They relate to Him as water both in its material aspects—drinking, irrigation, flooding, fertilizing—and its spiritual aspects—a force larger than themselves on which they are utterly dependent.

“Brahmaputra is the Lord of this land,” Atul Bora, the devout potter on Majuli, said. Despite the benefits brought by hydroelectricity, damming the river could have unforeseen consequences because “we should never try to control our Lord; He is the boss (malik) of us, not puny humans the boss of Him, and only when we recognize that will we be kept safe.”

“He knows each one of us personally, what we are thinking,” Atul continued. Up in Pemako, the Rinpoche said, “We must cultivate our hearts, to learn from rivers. If we learn to listen, the river can bestow religious teachings or even give us a mantra. Each river is an individual.”

The people we met along the Brahmaputra and its headwaters live as part of a spiritual ecosystem. For them, the river’s individual self is composed of many selves, a braided community of sentient water, forests, Deities, fish, animals, people, plants and insects who all contribute to a greater consciousness (Brahman), a sense of the self as being more than the individual self (atman). This expanded view of self could model a way out of the alienation brought about by an extractive world view, in which the river is no longer alive but a commodity. 

Jadu Moni Hazorika, the Majuli Island community health worker, said “Brahmaputra weaves all the different kinds of people along His way into one. All of us share a single heart—our Lord Brahmaputra.”

One Spectacular River and the Marvelous People Who Live Along It

 In the Upper Reaches is a Mix of Several Religions

Adi Shakti Cave

Visiting Majuli Island 

Local Arts and Crafts

Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve

The Great Shakti Peeth of Kamakhya Temple

About Our Authors

Ellen Coon is an independent scholar of religion and oral historian who has spent many years researching Hinduism and Buddhism in India and Nepal. Her current interests include how people experience the divinity of water, as she and colleague Thomas Kelly explore the four holy rivers emanating from Mt. Kailash in Tibet.

Thomas Kelly is a freelance photojournalist who has lived in the Himalayas for four decades. Journeying seven times to Mount Kailash, he visually chronicles the Brahmaputra, Indus, Karnali and Sutlej, honoring rivers as divine beings and the Wisdom Keepers living in communion with them, amid rapidly transforming traditions globally today. www.thomaslkellyphotos.com

Post Views: 134