The camera reached Gangotri one clear morning in May 2023, where the Ganga begins. What it showed: a white stone temple under a saffron flag, a boulder riverbed, pale meltwater between the stones, snow peaks far off.

What it did not show: the source. Gaumukh, the cow's mouth of the glacier, is eighteen kilometres up the valley at 4,000 metres. No road, no camera. Coverage ends at the temple.

Gangotri is the last town on the Bhagirathi, source stream of the Ganga. Here they say the river came down, loosed from Shiva's hair after Bhagiratha's penance; the king's stone still stands by the temple. Every winter, on Diwali, the doors close and the goddess goes down to Mukhba until spring. In 2013 the river rose here too and wrecked the trail to its own beginning. This August it covered Varanasi's ghats.

Below the temple it is not yet the Ganga. The name begins at Devprayag, where the Bhagirathi meets the Alaknanda. The holiest river on earth is named only after it has begun.

02:00. The valley is dark above the last lamp, and somewhere the glacier is giving the river its first water, as it has since before any name. The camera stops where the walking begins. The river does not.