Ganges River/Rishikesh rafting

Rafting in Rishikesh is a popular tourism feature for adventure sport. Rishkesh has emerged as the centre for North India's Ganges white water rafting. Popular with foreign tourists, local tour operators market the sport along with spiritual and yoga tourism. Rishikesh is located in the lower Himalayas on the river Ganga, and what was once a quaint village has become an overcrowded slum taken over by rapacious tour operators and clients waiting to escape this modern hell on earth.

The clients are oblivious to the dangers of rafting in Rishikesh and the untrained local villagers who masquerade as trained professionals. Every year at least 200 persons are drowned in the River Ganges and its treacherous currents. Instances are legion of Rishikesh rafting foreigners sleeping overnight in tents on the white beaches upstream of Rishikesh being swept away in the flash bore tides which this stretch of the Ganges river is notorious for.