A month-long festival will be organised in 262 different venues from Gangotri to Gangasagar to spread awareness about the need to rejuvenate Ganga and showcase the cultural heritage of the river.
The festival --Ganga Sanskriti Yatra-- will begin at Gangotri on February 14 at 6:56 AM and end with a closing ceremony on March 13 at Kapilmuni Ashram in Gangasagar.
"The objective of Ganga Sanskriti Yatra is to showcase and discover the cultural diversity and heritage of Ganga river basin and also to spread necessary awareness among the masses about safeguarding and rejuvenating it," the Culture Ministry said in a release here.
"The festival is being organised from Gangotri to Gangasagar from 14 February to 13 March in 262 different venues, connecting with over 2.5 crore people," it added.
Apart from the main venues of the Yatra, including Gangotri, Haridwar, Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi, Patna and Ganga Sagar, the festival will cover all the confluences of the tributaries of Ganga and the places of historical and cultural importance.
Folk songs and dances, documentary/ films shows, street plays, kavi sammelan, photography exhibitions, quiz competitions, and seminars, among others, will be performed during the festival.
The Ganga, which has been declared as a national heritage by the Government, flows for a distance of around 2,525 km from the Himalayan Mountains to Bay of Bengal and heavily populated with over 400 million people living in the basin.
Today, about 100 festivals and 50 major fairs are celebrated annually on the banks of the Ganga and more than 4-5 billion people yearly visit them.
