Hoogly River and Howrah

"The Hooghly River or the Bhagirathi-Hooghly, is an approximately 260 kilometres (160 mi) long. It splits from the Ganges as a canal in Murshidabad District at the Farakka Barrage. The town of Hugli-Chinsura, formerly Hooghly, is located on the river, in the Hooghly (district) The river's average depth is 200 feet (61 m) and maximum depth is 381 feet (116 m). The Hooghly river flows more than 15 kilometres along the western edge of Kolkata between Prinsep Ghat and Bagbazar. But it is only for a short 1.5 km stretch between Babu Ghat and Prinsep Ghat that is open and visible. In the remaining section, the river is either made out of bounds by hideous rusting warehouses that are housed on its edge, or inexplicably hidden behind a high wall.

In its upper reaches the river is generally known as the Bhagirathi, until it reaches Hooghly. The word Bhagirathi literally means ""caused by Bhagiratha"", a mythical Sagar Dynasty prince who was instrumental in bringing the river Ganga from the heavens on to the earth, in order to release his 60,000 grand-uncles from a curse of the saint Kapila.

This footage is part of the professionally-shot stock footage archive of Wilderness Films India Ltd., the largest collection of imagery from South Asia. The Wilderness Films India collection comprises of thousands of hours of high quality broadcast imagery, mostly shot on HDCAM 1080i High Definition, HDV and Digital Betacam. Write to us for licensing this footage on a broadcast format, for use in your production! We pride ourselves in bringing the best of India and South Asia to the world... wfi @ vsnl.com and [email protected]."