Where rivers meet & merge

The place where two or more rivers meet is called a sangam, or a prayag. In Uttarakhand, there are several prominent prayags, including Vishnuprayag, Karnaprayag, Nandaprayag, Rudraprayag and Devprayag. At Devprayag, rivers Alaknanda and Bhagirathi combine to form the holy Ganga. There are many confluences in India, the main being at the confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati rivers, known as Prayagraj, in Uttar Pradesh.

In Indic culture, a sangam is considered a holy place and a pilgrimage site where devotees perform puja, rituals and ancestral rites, offering prayers for happiness, good health and progress in their own lives and the well-being of their loved ones. It is the place where two rivers coming from different sources and directions meet to form a new river, which then continues its onward journey towards the ocean. The sangam's sacredness and spiritual significance is because it is a place where, metaphorically speaking, two incoming rivers drop their ego, lose their identity and give birth to a new river.

Real spiritual effort is about erasing the ego and reclaiming one's divine nature. It is the ego, the idea of being a separate individual from the Self or whole, which is the primary cause of selfishness, violence, misery and suffering. Pilgrimage to a sangam reminds us that the way to benediction, contentment and bliss lies in effacing one's ego.