River of Offerings is a hard cover photography and story book (approximately 225 pages) covering twelve stories from a variety of locations along the Ganga, India’s sacred river, from Gangotri in northern India to the delta where it opens into the Bay of Bengal.
I initially went to India in 2008 to deepen my understanding of yoga. After more than a dozen trips, I see the practice of yoga, the country of India and our place in the world through an entirely different lens. I was introduced to a variety of interpretations of what it means to practice yoga, spent time with the first female sadhus to participate in an ancient gathering of 100 million people called the Kumbh Mela, fled a devastating monsoon that took the lives of 12,000 people, spent time with people whose bodies were ravaged by polio, and struggled to understand the sufferings and joys of those I met along the way.
“In the morning, we’re standing on what’s left of the road, brushing our teeth, looking at what the divine goddess has taken away. A tiny roadside restaurant’s sign reads Love All Serve All and I take the sign as a sign. Everyone I meet seems to as well, because we’re sharing in one of those “survival ordeals” where a window inside all of us opens for a short time, revealing what we know and apparently just as soon forget during normal waking hours: we are all from the same family. The storm has washed away everything unessential, including culture and caste, and left people who are happy to be together. We look up at a sliver of blue in the sky. The morning’s small talk among car passengers is a collective prayer in a variety of languages that the rain has come to an end. Our new friends push the car to get it started and we begin another day’s travel.”
