This article is written by Bageshwer Singh, who walked along the River Beas in Punjab in February 2026. The walk was supported by Veditum as part of its Moving Upstream programme. This is part 2 of a two-part series where he narrates his learnings and experiences of walking nearly 185-km over 12 days. You can read the part 1 here: Becoming Beas.
All photos used in this piece are by Bageshwer (unless specified otherwise)
Cover photo: A living floodplain: river, grasslands and livelihoods.
Among all the animals associated with Beas, none is more elusive and mythical than Bulan, the Punjabi name for the Indus River dolphin.
It was previously thought to be a sub-species of the more-famous Gangetic Dolphin. But, in 2021, it was proved to be a different species, scientifically christened, Platanista minor. Like its Gangetic cousin, this dolphin is near-blind and critically endangered. Bulan, the word referring to its long snout, is only found in Beas in India.
Indus River dolphin is the state aquatic animal of Punjab. Yet, there are just an estimated three dolphins in the wild in Beas. The fate of the Bulan is tied to the fate of Beas.
“When I was young, I used to go to the river for swimming. There used to be so many Bulan. They would break the surface of the water and jump up, as if they were playing,” said Jagir Singh, a resident of Marar village. At his house, we noticed that only the elders stayed. His sons and nephews had migrated to the UAE for work. Jagir and his brother too got an opportunity to work outside Punjab, but they said it was difficult for them to imagine a life without their fields and river.
But the river of Jagir’s childhood was changing for the worse. “Now, the river is too polluted to swim in it. Many Bulan have died due to the pollution and fishing. The last one I saw was over six years ago,” he said.
Bulan becomes the unfortunate by-catch during fishing, especially when gillnets are used. During the walk, we occasionally saw fishing boats laying gillnets across channels of the river. Bulan populations also suffer due to sand mining and the release of untreated effluents.
While Beas may not have large industrial clusters, raw sewage from many villages and towns along the river also eventually enters Beas. Goindwal Sahib is the only town on the Beas with a sewage treatment plant.
Spotting the Bulan in the murky waters was always going to be difficult.
On the second day of our walk, we stopped on the banks to have lunch. The afternoon was still and the Beas flowed placidly. In the distance, we could spot a flock of Greylag geese. We were in a calm, meditative state when we saw movement on the surface of the river. A Bulan jumped. And within minutes, another dolphin jumped. We couldn’t believe our eyes.
Sunny, my walking partner and an artist who composes music, said: “I think my journey is complete, I have been blessed by the Queen of the Beas, Bulana-ji.”.
Dr. Sunny had seen the Bulan in 2010, and it had inspired him to start Bhoomitra (“Friend of the Earth”), an organisation working to create awareness about the enigmatic dolphins among local communities, and promote ecotourism. The sighting also inspired him to composed a song dedicated to Bulan, imagining the dolphin as both a guide and an old friend of the river.
"Jao gi koi karma wali tere dwar"
Only the fortunate find their way to your doorstep,
"Jeena tu sikhaya wekhi teri taari, o yaari ji,"
Thank you for teaching us how to live through your grace
We were indeed the fortunate ones to see the creature again.
Inspired again, Dr. Sunny wrote about our sighting: “Bulana-ji lives in these waters. Nearly blind, it navigates entirely through sound-echolocation and vibration. It has moved through these rivers long before borders, before Partition, before modern identity.
If humans experienced rupture, the dolphin has experienced continuity. When a species like this disappears, something more than biodiversity is lost. A mode of memory disappears. Their extinction is not only a biological crisis. It is a collapse of memory in the river.”
In the footsteps of our Gurus
“Guruan de rah te ta tusi paye ho, mubarak tuhanu!”
(You are walking on the path once travelled by the divine Gurus. Blessing to you)
As we walked and as we met people, we would hear this phrase often. Guru Nanak, the Sikh spiritual teacher, considered to be the founder of Sikhism had once travelled along these same floodplains during his fourth Udassi (journey) when he travelled across Punjab plains before he settled on the banks of Ravi in Kartarpur (now in Pakistan).
Through this journey, we’d find places where Gurus had spent time along the Beas. We walked through village Jalalabad, which Guru Nanak had stayed during his travels, Guru Angad Dev (the second of the ten holy Gurus) spent most of his life at Goindwal Sahib and Guru Amar Das (the third Sikh Guru) did much of his teaching at Khadur Sahib, not far from the river.
As I walked the Beas, I often found myself reflecting on Guru Nanak’s words as written in the Japji Sahib (from the Guru Granth Sahib, the scripture of the Sikhs.) While waking up in villages along the river, these were among the first lines we heard at dawn as the daily prayers began in village gurdwaras.
"ਪਵਣੁ ਗੁਰੂ ਪਾਣੀ ਪਿਤਾ ਮਾਤਾ ਧਰਤਿ ਮਹਤੁ ॥"
Air the teacher, water the father and the Earth the great mother.
I wondered whether we have cared for the river and the land in the way Guru Nanak might have imagined. Elsewhere in Gurbani, he describes water as the source from which all life flourishes (ਪਹਿਲਾ ਪਾਣੀ ਜੀਉ ਹੈ ਜਿਤੁ ਹਰਿਆ ਸਭੁ ਕੋਇ), a reminder that our relationship with rivers is not merely one of dependence, but of kinship.
Maybe by divine coincidence, we came across Khadau (a wooden sandal) on the banks and we reflected that Guru Nanak must have had a sandal like this when he walked over 30,000km across the Indian Subcontinent and beyond.
Before the walk, I was told that the people of Punjab were not as generous as I thought. Mistrust had spread among the communities. But, during the walk, I was constantly surprised by the generosity and warmth we received. Even in villages ravaged by floods and erosion, where hardship was apparent, people were eager to help and to take care of us.
We had a feast almost every day, and with each meal we heard: “Eh Babe Nanak da langar hai” (this is the langar of Guru Nanak). This is a reference to a story of Guru Nanak. His father had given him 22 Rupees to start a business. However, as the Guru left the house, he saw a group of people meditating. He spent the money on food and fed people. This started the revered Sikh tradition of Langar: a community kitchen where everyone is served meals without discrimination.
I loved hearing the phrase uttered as it reminded me of the generosity of Punjabi people, and the spirit of Chardi Kala (a concept meaning an unbreakable spirit). Centuries after Guru Nanak’s journeys across Punjab, the tradition of sharing, Wand Chhako, still survives, particularly in Gurudwaras where Langar is open for all.
The generosity was warm, welcoming, allowing us to soak in the river and its people. Sarpanch Lakhwinder Singh welcomed us into his home at Passi Bet, a small village close to the banks of Beas. They had prepared a generous meal made entirely from produce from their farms. The village itself carried a sense of calm. Early next morning, before continuing the walk, we paused to watch the sunrise over the river, listening to the sound of flowing water and those of the morning hymns from the village temple. Mist slowly lifted from the floodplains.
The generosity often arrived unexpectedly. One afternoon, Rajpreet Dhillon, a school teacher from Shri Hargobindpur, contacted us after hearing about the walk and came to meet us carrying tea, homemade biscuits and Jaggery produced by his Farmer Producer Organisation. We sat together on the sandy riverbed, sharing tea while the river flowed quietly beside us.
Rajpreet spoke about the environmental struggles of the region. Just a kilometre upstream from where we sat, the 2018 molasses leak from Chadha Sugar Mills had severely affected the river ecosystem. A large number of fish and other aquatic life had died then. Villages in the surrounding area are still struggling with groundwater contamination.
The river as a spiritual call
For Sunny Sandhu, who joined the walk for several days, the river was not only an ecological landscape, but also a space of memory, sound and ancestral presence. Reflecting on the journey, he wrote:
“In East Punjab, we do not return to graves. Our ancestors are carried away-reduced to ash and released into the flowing waters. For me, that water is the Beas River. So, if I ask, where are my ancestors? The only honest answer is: They are in the river Beas. My mother, father, grandmothers, grandfathers, uncles, cousins and friends are all there. I have personally sent them into the River Beas in Goindwal as bones and ash. We dispersed our ancestors into rivers, but we did not develop ways of returning to them. This is true for many Punjabis I know. And yet, we do not go back to them or take care of the river. Rivers are practically dying under the weight of human progressive ignorance.
Partition of Punjab in 1947 did not only divide land; it severed memory from geography. Villages, shrines, cremation grounds – entire landscapes of belonging were left behind. Even if one wanted to maintain a relationship with ancestral sites, it often became impossible.
The river is calling many souls to unite and progress in ecological action and turn the tide. We remember our ancestors who are in the river system and we pledge to keep it clean for our future generations. I know the path is hard but I see many souls moving upstream and pushing us in the right direction. And I am sure our ancestors and descendants will be happy if we take care of the rivers.
When the river ceases to be experienced as a carrier of ancestral presence, it becomes easier to treat it as waste. My work attempts to re-enter this relationship-not through ritual revival, but through relational, ecological, and vibrational listening.”
Since 2014, Dr. Sunny has organised the Beda Yatra, an annual gathering on the Beas that brings together artists, naturalists and local communities to reconnect with the river through music and conversations. It is for the preservation of the Bulan and the Beda (the traditional river boat). “It is not a pilgrimage in the traditional sense. It is not a ritual revival. It is an experiment in reconnection,” writes Sunny.
A farewell to Beas
I believe that a river can be understood by studying its geography, geology, hydrology and its history. But the river itself can only be experienced by walking next to it.
We walked in winter and saw the Beas in its placid, saintly state. We understand that we didn’t feel the wrath of its monsoon flow, nor did we feel the harshness of the summer sun making the banks intolerable. The winter carried with it a softness that made it comfortable to sit on the river banks and watch the gentle flow of the river.
I had set out to walk the Beas in Punjab hoping to understand its floodplains, native vegetation and the landscapes that have evolved alongside the river over millennia. While much has been transformed by agriculture, dams and embankments, and other markers of what we consider to be human development, I also found remarkable resilience. Fragments of native grasslands still support rich wildlife. The floodplains continue to recover from floods and fires.
Beas supports remarkable diversity of wildlife, here’s a glimpse of a few wild species we saw during the walk.
I come back with a reaffirmed vision that there remains immense potential to restore these floodplains not only for biodiversity, but also to help people rediscover their relationship with the river.
At innumerable moments, I dipped into the river. I took naps on the moist sand. Sleep, even for a few moments, is deep, fulfilling and empties the mind of its knots and worries.
Much like how my body left its shape on the soft sands of the river banks when I get up from a rest; the river has left behind its trace on my mind even when I’m far away from it. The sound of its flow continues to travel with me.
Bageshwer is an ecologist and nature educator based in Jalandhar. He is associated with PAHAL, a youth organisation focused on holistic social development. Having worked as a nature educator in London and as an ecologist in Jalandhar and Kapurthala, he blends scientific knowledge with field-based learning and community engagement. He graduated in Botany from Hindu College, University of Delhi and holds a master’s in Forestry (specialising in plant taxonomy) from the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun. He has been a fellow of Veditum’s Moving Upstream Sindh Fellowship.
Reach Bageshwer at bageshwersingh30@gmail.com. If you’d like to commission stories from this walk, please write to the authors or email us at asid@veditum.org
This piece was copy edited by Mohit Rao, and produced by Siddharth Agarwal.
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