1. Swami Sundaranand was an Indian Yogi, photographer, author and mountaineer who lectured widely in India on threats to the Ganges River and the loss of Himalayan glaciers due to global warming.
16 Facts About Swami Sundaranand
1. 2.
Swami Sundaranand has witnessed up close the gradual shrinking of the Gangotri Glacier from which the Ganges springs forth, and has chronicled his devotion to the natural beauty of the Indian Himalayas as an accomplished photographer.
3.
Swami Sundaranand continues to be a principal advocate for the ecological preservation of the Himalayas, the Ganges and its source at Gangotri.
4.
Swami Sundaranand has taken more than 100,000 photos, over a 50-year period, of the shrinking Gangotri glacier in the Indian Himalayas.
5.
Swami Sundaranand travelled through India raising awareness of the Gangotri's rapid decline.
6.
Swami Sundaranand is the author of the book Himalaya: Through the Lens of a Sadhu with over 425 photographs spanning 60 years of his work.
7.
Swami Sundaranand sought to capture the Eternal in Nature and to document the region as it once was with a special emphasis on planting the seeds of hope and inspiration to solve the environmental concerns of the area.
8.
Swami Sundaranand is the subject of a feature documentary shot at his home in Gangotri titled Personal Time with Swamiji.
9.
Swami Sundaranand has lived in Gangotri since 1948, when he became a renunciate, and arrived there from Andhra Pradesh.
10.
Swami Sundaranand attributed this to the unchecked construction of hotels and ashrams in Gangotri and the dumping of waste from these locations, such as faecal matter and garbage, into the Ganga.
11.
Swami Sundaranand has expressed the view that the pollution of Ganga at its source and melting Himalayan glaciers were the real issues that environmentalists needed to urgently take up, rather than opposing the construction of dams.
12.
Swami Sundaranand had a strong connection with the Himalayas that few others have.
13.
Swami Sundaranand has climbed dozens of its peaks, several of them over 21,000 feet above sea level, and has lectured at Tensing's Himalayan Institute.
14.
Swami Sundaranand was a skilled naturalist who was familiar with thousands of Himalayan plants and he knew the lore and medicinal uses of these species.
15.
Swami Sundaranand engaged in 3 hours of meditation during the day, and sometimes meditated at night into the early hours of the morning.
16.
Swami Sundaranand died on 23 December 2020 at a private hospital in Dehradun.