(CNN) — Every year, tens of millions of Hindu pilgrims wade into the Ganges River, seeking salvation from the eternal cycle of life and death. Holy men lead prayers and offer blessings, and devotees wash their sins away in the sacred waters.

A pilgrimage is a sacred journey taken for a spiritual purpose – to worship, to seek the truth and to visit a site where a significant religious event happened. Hindus have many different important sites of pilgrimage associated with stories of gods and goddesses. Most of them are in India.

Ordinary people who live by the river use it to bathe in, wash their clothes in and for drinking water. Over 10 million people bathe in the river every day. Hindu legend has it that the Goddess Ganga had the power to purify anything that touched her and she flowed from the heavens and purified the people of India.

The main causes of water pollution in the Ganga river are the disposal of human sewage and animal waste, increasing population density, and disposal of industrial waste into the river.

Most Hindus believe that humans are in a cycle of death and rebirth called samsara. When a person dies, their atman is reborn in a different body. Some believe rebirth happens directly at death, others believe that an atman may exist in other realms.

Yes , it is 100% safe to swim in River Ganges but only if you are a good swimmer because you will find more deep when you will start moving towards the mid. Yes, water is little bit dirty but as you now millions of people take bath in river ganges and do not have problems after bath.

The River Ganges is more than 2,500km long and has the most populated river basin in the world. Hundreds of millions of people and a huge range of wildlife rely on the Ganges.

Low flow in our streams and rivers occurs during summer months when there is less rain and warmer temperatures and the snow-pack has been depleted through spring melt. On this page: About Stream Flow.

The end of a river is its mouth, or delta. At a river’s delta, the land flattens out and the water loses speed, spreading into a fan shape. Usually this happens when the river meets an ocean, lake, or wetland.

In straight rivers, the fastest flow is in the middle of the river and around bends the water tends to flow fastest and be deepest around the outer edge of the bend. In other words, the position of the fastest surface flow is displaced towards the outer edge of the bend.

Energy levels are usually higher near a river’s source, when its course is steep and its valley narrow. Energy levels rise even higher in times of flood. When energy levels are low, only small particles can be transported (if any).

Rapids are areas of shallow, fast-flowing water in a stream. Rapids tend to form in younger streams, with water flow that is straighter and faster than in older streams.

They can be extremely dangerous features of a rapid because a person can get trapped underneath them under water. This is especially true of rocks that are undercut on the upstream side. Here, a boater may become pinned against the rock under water. Many whitewater deaths have occurred in this fashion.

Often, waterfalls form as streams flow from soft rock to hard rock. This happens both laterally (as a stream flows across the earth) and vertically (as the stream drops in a waterfall). In both cases, the soft rock erodes, leaving a hard ledge over which the stream falls.