Along the Ganges

By Ilija Trojanow

Along the Ganges is a wonderful portrait of a river and its people written with great humanity and understanding by a prize-winning author.

'The man pulls the goat into the Ganga until the water slaps against its belly. With wet hands he strokes her swollen womb. He splashes water on her, whispers in her ear. Then he leads her out of the water and as soon as she feels solid ground beneath her hooves, she throws: two kids. The shepherd cuts the navel cord, takes the newborn into his arm sand sets out for his village nearby. The river flows on, unhurried.... Not everything is born this quietly. Ganga bursts out of the glacier and, with a long-drawn shout, falls to the earth, and then off she goes, impetuous, head over heels. She takes hold of Shiva’s head - hard on impact, soft when she flows off. She falls, beads on his forehead, pearls from his locks - her stormy roar, his starry silence -right into the last furrow of his face. The cascades shake him out of his self-absorption. He can no longer remain still, he jumps up and rattles his damru. It sounds like splitting ice, endlessly splitting, until it consists of nothing but drops that fall from his lips. Ganga grasps Shiva’s hands, the two begin to whirl around the melting moment. The beat of many drops becomes a torrent. The maelstrom swallows all,the echo of oblivion, the sleeping rocks, the two horns that rise above the glacier which looks like the wrinkled face of an old and revered cow.
'Not so fast,' a breathless Ganga whispers.
'Faster,' a raring Shiva shouts.
And they whirl on.'

Ilija Trojanow travelled hundreds of miles along the Ganges from its source in the Himalayas to the busy cities of the delta to offer a breathtaking and beautifully written account of his two-year journey along the holy river, on foot, by boat, by bus and train. His vivid recollections weave between myth and reality and provide, as one commentator writes, a ‘refreshingly honest account of a country torn between ancient traditions and the lures of modern life’. On the mythical level, the Ganga is a divine force, an eternally pure deity and Hindu priests regard it as a sin to call her a river at all; she is a goddess the source of the world and her waters are holy and healing. 

But life along the Ganges also reflects busy modern-day India, where purity has turned into waste.  As one man puts it: ‘like every believer, I must take my morning bath in Ganga.  As a scientist I know that I shouldn’t even dip my little toe in the river.’ 

During his travels he visited the great Hindu festivals, met local people and talked to those who warn of ecological disasters resulting from gigantic dams.

Also available as a paperback.

‘A lyrical homage to India’s holiest, moodiest, foulest river. . . Trojanow is the perfect mix of insider and outsider. A Hindi speaker,he can also stand back and see what makes India tick. . . . It is a treasure of a book, a must-have for anyone spending time on the Ganges and wanting to get to know her better.’

Susan Elderkin, Financial Times

Ilija Trojanow is, according to John de Falbe, ‘resourceful and intrepid as a traveller, he is also knowledgeable and observant, and he writes very well.  He appears always to be open to whatever happens, and the spareness of his value judgements means that the diversity and confusions along his way are vivid… He is funny, and shocking, and always interesting…’ 

 'The Berliner Literaturpreis 2007 is awarded to Ilija Trojanow, the German author of Bulgarian origin, for his narrative work, which is devoted to a cosmopolitan attitude and which has as its theme the multiple interaction between the cultures of West and East as first seen in his debut novel 'The World Is Vast And Everywhere Salvation Lies In Wait'. His clear, metaphor-rich and poetically dense language explores new narrative forms on the border between the prose of a novel and travel reportage. 

Similar to the protagonist of his most recent novel, the explorer and  travel writer Sir Richard Burton, Trojanow is himself a 'Collector of Worlds',whose submersion into other cultural spheres and religious worlds never lacks openness, curiosity and respect and describes them from a double perspective - from the outside as well as from within.'
Jury of the Berliner Literaturpreis

Ilia Trojanov was born in Bulgaria in 1965. After fleeing his homeland via Yugoslavia and Italy, he was granted political asylum in Germany. He is a writer, whose is himself as traveller between the worlds, journeying on a quest that leads him through different cultures and religions.

He is also the author of Mumbai to Mecca (Haus Publishing, 2007), published in the same series.