Which of the following is the place of confluence of the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, Devprayag. Devprayag, at about 830 m in Tehri Garhwal district of Uttarakhand, is the last and lowest of the Panch Prayag, and the only one of the five where the Alaknanda meets the Bhagirathi. What makes it the confluence worth knowing is what happens below it: from that point the combined stream is no longer called either name — it becomes the Ganga. All five Panch Prayag are confluences on the Alaknanda, so the Alaknanda in the question stem is a constant and tells you nothing; only the second river separates them. Going downstream, Vishnuprayag is Alaknanda + Dhauliganga, Nandaprayag is Alaknanda + Nandakini, Karnaprayag is Alaknanda + Pindar, Rudraprayag is Alaknanda + Mandakini, and Devprayag is Alaknanda + Bhagirathi. The two streams that meet here arrive from different valley lines of the Garhwal Himalaya. The Bhagirathi, about 205 km long, rises at Gaumukh at the snout of the Gangotri glacier at roughly 3,892 m. The Alaknanda rises at the foot of the Satopanth and Bhagirath Kharak glaciers at about 3,880 m and comes down past Badrinath and Joshimath. Which of the two is 'the Ganga' depends on what you are measuring: in Hindu tradition the Bhagirathi is the source stream, while in hydrology the Alaknanda is taken as the source stream because it contributes much the larger share of the flow. Devprayag town itself is built above the meeting point and holds the temple of Raghunathji — huge stone blocks, pyramidal in form, capped by a white cupola.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The uppermost of the Panch Prayag, in Chamoli district about 12 km from Joshimath, where the Dhauliganga joins the Alaknanda — not the Bhagirathi. It tempts candidates who remember only that the Panch Prayag are five Alaknanda confluences and reach for the one whose name sounds most senior, or who assume the Ganga must be named at the highest point.  (b) Also in Chamoli district, and the confluence of the Alaknanda with the Pindar, the river fed by the Pindari glacier; the place takes its name from Karna of the Mahabharata. It is a genuine prayag on the correct river, which is exactly what makes it a usable distractor — but the joining stream is the Pindar, not the Bhagirathi.  (c) The strongest trap on the list, because it is the prayag immediately upstream of Devprayag — being one place out in the sequence lands you here. At Rudraprayag the Alaknanda is joined by the Mandakini, the river that comes down from Kedarnath; the district itself is named after the town.

Concept: A prayag is a river confluence, and in Hindu sacred geography a confluence is a place of special merit, so India's prayags are pilgrimage sites as much as landforms. The Panch Prayag are the five confluences of the Alaknanda in Uttarakhand, visited in sequence along the Char Dham route. Physically, they are the points where tributaries draining separate glacier-fed valleys of the Garhwal Himalaya break into the Alaknanda's trunk gorge; because these are steep, narrow, high-energy valleys, each confluence is a sharp junction between two visibly different waters rather than the broad braided meeting seen in the plains. The naming convention matters as much as the geography: the river is Alaknanda above Devprayag and Ganga below it, so 'where the Ganga begins' and 'where the Alaknanda ends' are the same question. Note the separate word Prayagraj — the Ganga–Yamuna confluence far downstream in the plains — which belongs to a different set entirely and is not one of the Panch Prayag.

State PCS 2025 Q108 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q108 — Geography PYQ with Answer