Here is an excellent BBC documentary, Ganges, on the river's Himalayan birth and descent, its journey through the plains, and its end in the Bay of Bengal in what is the largest river delta in the world. The series focuses on the natural history and human life along the river's course. The three episodes embedded below (one hour each) are: (1) Daughter of the Mountains, (2) River of Life, (3) Waterland. One critique I have is that by concentrating the most beautiful and the rarest nature and wildlife footage, the series encourages the highly misguided impression that the environment along the river's course is robust and thriving.
I watched these when they came out, and I agree, the films hardly address the immense ecological stress on the Ganga, particularly from municipal and industrial wastes; not to mention the battles over big dams in the upper reaches. However, I really enjoyed the rare wildlife footage that you mention and some other things that I didn't know about (did it have footage of the practice of catching fish with trained otters?). I think this was part of a bouquet of shows the BBC did on the 60th Independence anniversary including Michael Wood's six part "The Story of India" and Sanjeev Bhaskar's journey to his dad's (Pakistani) Punjab village.
Posted by: Kapil | February 03, 2012 at 03:22 AM