The rive Ganga is considered holy by the Hindus who use its water to bless important occasions, from births, weddings, and funerals to festivals. Almost every household in the country stores some "Gangajal" that is mostly collected from holy places like Varanasi and Haridwar which is not possible for everyone to visit frequently. So, if the stored holy water at your home finishes you can either approach your nearest post office or order it online.
Six years back the government of India launched a scheme wherein the holy water of the Ganga is collected in Gangotri, where the water is considered the purest and the river starts its roughly 2,500-kilometre journey, and distributed to Hindus across the country.
Labourers in Gangotri fill jerry cans with the holy waters of the river and load them on to trucks that transports them to a bottling plant 100 kilometres downstream, reported news agency AFP.
The cans are then left to settle for three or four days and then filtered in tanks before workers decant it by hand into 250-millilitre plastic bottles that dispatched to post offices across the country.
The initiative has certainly found support with the Hindus.
"This is for every faithful Hindu who can't get here personally," said one of the workers while speaking to news agency AFP in the pilgrimage town of Gangotri.
"It feels blessed to be part of a project that reaffirms our Hindu faith and delivers this divine water to all corners of the country," he added.
According to the news agency, a bottle of the holy water costs just Rs 30 and can be bought over the counter at post offices around India. Customers can also ordered the holy water online by paying Rs 321 for a pack of four bottles.
Since the scheme launched, millions of the little containers have been sold.