Adopted from India when she was six and raised in Spain, the author takes a heart-wrenching trip back to India as an adult to uncover her roots and discover a sister she never knew.

‘The Ganges: Cultural, Economic, and Environmental Importance’ is a geographical, cultural, economic, and environmental interpretation of the Ganga River. The Ganga River originates from Gaumukh- situated in the high Himalaya, flows through the world’s biggest fertile alluvial plain, and inlets into the Bay of Bengal at Ganga Sagar. It makes a unique natural and cultural landscape and is believed to be the holiest river of India. The Hindus called it ‘Mother Ganga’ and worship it. The towns/cities, situated on its bank, are world-famous and are known as the highland and valley pilgrimages. The water of the Ganga is pious, and the Hindus use it on different occasions while performing the rituals and customs. This book is unique because no previous study which presents a complete and comprehensive geographical description of the Ganga has been composed. This book presents the historical and cultural significance of the Ganga and its tributaries. Empirical, archival, and observation methods were applied to conduct this study. There are a total of 10 chapters in this book such as ‘Introduction’, ‘the Ganga Basin’, ‘Geography of the Ganga Basin’, ‘the Ganges System: Ganga and its Tributaries’, ‘Ganga between Gaumukh and Uttarkashi’, ‘the Major Cultural Towns’, ‘Major Fairs and Festivals’, ‘Economic Significance of the Ganga’, ‘Environmental Issues’, and ‘Conclusions’. The contents of the book are enriched by 89 figures, 15 tables, and substantial citations and references.

This powerful memoir tracing a young woman's journey into her past is a deeply affecting story about love, fate and the true meaning of belonging. 'Your father and I wanted to have the children which nature could not give us, and you were clamouring for the parents you were denied. Now we have come to the end of that page. It is time to turn over and start a new one, as much for you as for us.' Adopted from an orphanage in India at age seven, the only real home Asha Miro knew was in the centre of cosmopolitan Barcelona. Twenty years later Asha returns to her birthplace, determined to recover the missing pieces of her early life. But nothing could prepare Asha for India's assault on her senses and buried memories - or the shock that she had apparently been abandoned by her parents. But her journey into the past eventually leads her to the truth and a turning point that makes it all worthwhile - finding a sister she never knew existed, also called Asha, the only surviving member of her family. The joyous reunion of the two sisters, whose destinies could not have been more different - the ultimate in the 'sliding doors' of fate - changes both their lives forever. Interspersed with fragments of a diary in which Asha's mother lovingly recorded her adopted daughter's gradual discovery of a strange new world, it is easy to see why Daughter of the Ganges became a No.1 bestseller in Asha's adopted country of Spain. Here, for the first time, this extraordinary story is told in English.

A sweeping, interdisciplinary history of the world’s third-largest river, a potent symbol across South Asia and the Hindu diaspora Originating in the Himalayas and flowing into the Bay of Bengal, the Ganges is India’s most important and sacred river. In this unprecedented work, historian Sudipta Sen tells the story of the Ganges, from the communities that arose on its banks to the merchants that navigated its waters, and the way it came to occupy center stage in the history and culture of the subcontinent. Sen begins his chronicle in prehistoric India, tracing the river’s first settlers, its myths of origin in the Hindu tradition, and its significance during the ascendancy of popular Buddhism. In the following centuries, Indian empires, Central Asian regimes, European merchants, the British Empire, and the Indian nation-state all shaped the identity and ecology of the river. Weaving together geography, environmental politics, and religious history, Sen offers in this lavishly illustrated volume a remarkable portrait of one of the world’s largest and most densely populated river basins.

"The definitive translation of the classic Sanskrit work in a single-volume paperback edition"--