Chronicling the inner as well as the outer journey, an influential author offers his personal view of his spiritual adventure amid the breathtaking vistas of the Himalayas.

"River Dialogues is an ethnographic engagement with social movements contesting hydroelectric development on River Ganges"--Provided by publisher.

Dirty, Sacred Rivers explores South Asia's increasingly urgent water crisis, taking readers on a journey through North India, Nepal and Bangladesh, from the Himalaya to the Bay of Bengal. The book shows how rivers, traditionally revered by the people of the Indian subcontinent, have in recent decades deteriorated dramatically due to economic progress and gross mismanagement. Dams and ill-advised embankments strangle the Ganges and its sacred tributaries. Rivers have become sewage channels for a burgeoning population. To tell the story of this enormous river basin, environmental journalist Cheryl Colopy treks to high mountain glaciers with hydrologists; bumps around the rough embankments of India's poorest state in a jeep with social workers; and takes a boat excursion through the Sundarbans, the mangrove forests at the end of the Ganges watershed. She lingers in key places and hot spots in the debate over water: the megacity Delhi, a paradigm of water mismanagement; Bihar, India's poorest, most crime-ridden state, thanks largely to the blunders of engineers who tried to tame powerful Himalayan rivers with embankments but instead created annual floods; and Kathmandu, the home of one of the most elegant and ancient traditional water systems on the subcontinent, now the site of a water-development boondoggle. Colopy's vivid first-person narrative brings exotic places and complex issues to life, introducing the reader to a memorable cast of characters, ranging from the most humble members of South Asian society to engineers and former ministers. Here we find real-life heroes, bucking current trends, trying to find rational ways to manage rivers and water. They are reviving ingenious methods of water management that thrived for centuries in South Asia and may point the way to water sustainability and healthy rivers.

Alter crosses many miles, and several millennia, to search for the source of Indian religion. Along the way, he delves into the myths and traditions of an antique land. "Sacred Waters" is a richly told narrative of a beautiful land and of a man's interior journey, and is for readers everywhere who seek to plumb their own spiritual sources.

One journalist's account of her 7-year journey through the Ganges river basin to explore the revered, yet highly polluted, rivers of South Asia.

"The native American vision quest-a ritual of self-discovery. An opportunity to confront one's fears and to embrace one's dreams. A challenge to take charge of one's own life. The gift of being changed forever...In this companion to The Book of the Vision Quest, Steven Foster and Meredith Little elaborate on an ancient rite of passage that has much-needed resonance for the seeker of today. Leading us step by step through the wilderness toward the Sacred Mountain, it is a story not just of personal healing but of sacrifice, love, and the need to share this healing vision with others."-- Back cover.