September 12, 2013, on the banks of the Bhagirathi, Gangotri, Uttarakhand, India

"The river is insane," Wende texted via satellite.

I was confused: She couldn't know that, at that moment, I was sitting on the bank of a raging Bhagirathi River in the hamlet of Gangotri. Sure, she of course knew I was in India, but not precisely where.

Had I told her already about the swollen rivers here in Uttarakhand? I couldn't remember, as our travels had been a whirlwind, flying to Delhi, driving to Rishikesh, immersing in the region, shooting constantly for our film. We'd just driven through the devastation of the 2013 Himalayan Tsunami, a monumental cloudburst that originated near Kedarnath Temple, killing some 6,000 people and destroying most everything downstream. We were about to start hiking up valley to Gaumukh, the sacred source of the Ganges, along shattered banks of the still-swollen river.