Godavari Hot Springs

Godavari Hot Springs draws calcic mineral water on the banks of the Godavari river near Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh, where geothermal springs at the edge of the sacred river that Hindus call the Ganga of the south have been used for ritual purification and therapeutic bathing since the Vedic period in a landscape of paddy fields, coconut groves, and the deltaic waterways of the largest river basin in peninsular India. The Godavari Pushkaram, the twelve-yearly festival of ritual bathing at the Godavari's most sacred ghats that rotates between the twelve zodiac signs, attracts between 80 and 100 million pilgrims over twelve days when the planetary configuration is considered most auspicious, making it the largest peaceful gathering of human beings on Earth, a fact that places the Godavari's thermal springs within the context of one of humanity's most extraordinary collective acts of water worship. The calcic springs of Rajahmundry, used for cardiovascular and musculoskeletal conditions in the Ayurvedic medical tradition of Andhra Pradesh, flow in a delta landscape where the Godavari fans into seven distributary channels before reaching the Bay of Bengal in a wetland system of extraordinary ecological importance for migratory waterbirds, Irrawaddy dolphins, and the Olive Ridley sea turtles that nest on the sandbanks of the outer delta.