19 Miles

Bagmati flows through the Kathmandu Valley, marking the boundaries of Kathmandu and Lalitpur. With many temples and holy shrines along its banks, the river is sacred for both Hindus and Buddhists.   

Bagmati stretches 19 miles within the valley. However, as the pristine Bagmati flows down from Sundarijal, in the north-east outskirts of the Valley, through the growing urbanscape of the capital city, it undergoes a rapid and unfortunate metamorphosis. 

It turns into an unregulated dumping site. Everything is dumped in Bagmati– from untreated domestic sewage to hazardous hospitals waste and unprocessed industrial discharge; from remains of slaughtered animals to wastes produced by landless squatters living in slums on its shores, everything gets dumped here without any second thought. The results of such blatant disregard for the lifeline of the city are hard to escape.  

With what the modern civilization has done to it, the holiness of the Bagmati is questionable, as it exits the valley from Chobhar. 

~Photography and text by: Bijay Gajmer. This is an ongoing photo-essay.