Ganges

The holiest river for Hindus, and one of the major rivers of the Subcontinent. It rises in the Himalaya and flows east across the northern plains of India, past the cities of Lucknow, Varanasi, and Patna, and then into Bangladesh, where it is called the Padma River. It joins the Brahmaputra River in Bangladesh, just south of Dhaka, then flows south into the Bay of Bengal. Hindus believe that bathing in the Ganges confers blessings and that a person who has died will avoid the cycle of reincarnation if his ashes are scattered in the Ganges.