Notes on the Geography of Northern India: Roorkee Cemetery and Hardwar Ghats

Just happened to be passing through, was startled by the cemetery, and had to stop at the nearby bathing ghats.

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Roorkee, where the Ganges emerges from the Himalaya, was the logical place for the British to put an engineering college: after all, it's the locatiosn of the headworks of the Ganges Canal. Stands to reason that Roorkee soon had a cemetery.

Overgrown.

Here's one that's accessible. Students at the famous engineering college were dying of cholera.

Too much studying can do that?

Could an engineer have had a hand in this one?

Yes, indeed. The epitaph might have read, "Stayed On."

A few miles away, bathers have come to the sacred water.

It's very cold.

And swift, which is why the posts are there.

The water itself is silty. Or, as a bather says, "very dirty but very pure."

Back a couple of blocks in the crowded city, there's an opening for visitors' cars.

Very dirty but very pure?