Travel: Trekking around the Himalayan foothills in northern India

Hindu devotees fed long grasses to ribbon-adorned sacred cows as thousands of pilgrims bathed in India’s ultra-holy Ganges River to wash away their sins and cure ailments. Some soaking adherents tightly gripped iron chains secured to concrete stairs so the fast-rushing flow from the Himalayas wouldn’t fatally sweep them downstream. A young man with no legs determinedly rolled himself on a wheeled board to recite a mantra at the river’s edge. Frail elderly women, swathed in headscarves and saris, worshipped while sitting on puddled pavement near corroded metal changing lockers plastered with ads for Glow & Lovely skin cream. Men’s wet underwear briefs hung drying, an odd sight in this modest...