Kosi River of Sorrow

Women in a village close to the Nepalese border gather at a 3 day religious ceremony for holy water. They come to pray and make personal wishes.

The Kosi river, a mighty tributary of the Himalaya streams, is regarded as holy in the Nepalese and Indian border regions. But each monsoon the river turns into a destructive force of nature, flooding it's banks, sweeping away villages and killing people. Bihar province, which is cut in half by the river, is booming India's poorest region. During the dry season people live off the Kosi's fish and worship the river as a mother Goddess, but they also desperately try to build makeshift dams to stop the inevitable flooding. The Kosi is nicknamed ' river of sorrow' for causing the highest death tolls in Indian floods