“Do you do magic tricks?”
It is the villagers of Rajasthan. They watch us pass in the hot light of the Thar Desert. We are unwashed, covered in coarse dust, darkened by sun: charred scarecrows trudging across India with a cargo donkey. Local people mistake us for vagabond performers, traveling quacks, circus nomads. They believe we are sorcerers. The answer to their question is: Yes, of course. We carry magic. But then, so does everyone.
It lies in water.
Human beings are mobile wells of mildly salty water. As every schoolchild knows, our bodies contain roughly the same percentage of water that covers the Earth’s surface. Such harmonies are no mystery. We are water animals born onto a water planet. Water is everywhere and nowhere. It is a restless element—unstill, on the move, always shifting its physical state from gas to liquid to solid and back again.
One oxygen atom. Two atoms of hydrogen.
Water molecules are bent like an arrow tip. Like an elbow. This helps give water a certain polarity, an infinitesimal charge on each end. This is how it collectively shapes our reality. It is the enchanted solvent and glue of our tangible world. It is the compound that both dissolves and binds our brain cells, mountain ranges, the steam wafting from our morning tea, and tectonic plates.
And yet there is so little to drink! The salty oceans hold roughly 97 percent of all the water on the globe. The poles and glaciers, though melting under the effects of climate change, lock up about 2 percent. Only an absurdly small droplet of the world’s total supply, less than one percent, is available for human survival: liquid fresh water. And yet, we squander this treasure like fools lost in a desert.
I am walking across the world. Over the past seven years I have retraced the footsteps of Homo sapiens, who roamed out of Africa in the Stone Age and explored the primordial world. En route, I gather stories. And nowhere on my foot journey—not in any other nation or continent—have I encountered an environmental reckoning on the scale of India’s looming water crisis. It is almost too daunting to contemplate.
Read the full story here.
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Editor’s note: Online Roundtables
Today, July 16, at 10 a.m. EST (7:30 p.m. IT), join photographers John Stanmeyer and Camilla Ferrari, environmental documentarians Arati Kumar-Rao and Siddharth Agarwal, journalists Priyanka Borpujari and Prem Panicker, and writer Paul Salopek for the first of three Zoom roundtables about their work on river issues in India and their experiences while reporting and photographing this story. Join the conversation at our international roundtable here. (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/out-of-eden-walk-walking-india-i-tickets-112720155018)
The second roundtable: July 23 10 am ET / 7:30 p.m. IT | Walking India: Covering India’s Natural Environment
The third roundtable: July 30 10 am ET | Walking India: Covering the Human Environment
