More meanderings

At the risk of sounding repetitive, the view from the air of 'where Mark is at', is still dominated by rivers...By this afternoon he was just west of another major confluence on the Ganges. The Ganges is flowing left to right in the lower part of the image and is joined from the north by the River Ghugri. This river drains a huge part of eastern Nepal including the slopes of Mt Everest carrying millions of tons of silt on to the plain of Bihar in its annual floods. The silt is a mixed blessing. On the one hand it provides regular enrichment of the soils on the floodplain but it also blocks channels and fills up the river courses making flooding more likely. As one source stated "The river breaks into more than twelve distinct channels with shifting courses due to flooding. Over the last 200 years, the Ghugri River has shifted over 120 km from east to west. Flooding in India has extreme effects. India is second in the world after Bangladesh in deaths due to flooding , accounting for one fifth of global flooding deaths. There is certainly plenty evidence of the shifting course above.....

Earlier today Mark passed close to another area of ox bows - more evidence of changing river course. This is one which particularly caught my attention as it has clearly silted up over the years and is being taken over as new agricultural land..