Godavarie : Dakshīna Gungā, second longest river after Gungā, she rises at Nāshik beside the temple to Triambakeshwara Shiva built over one of the twelve Jyotirlingas, 80 km from the Arabian Sea. She then flows east for 1,465 kilometres (910 miles) until she splits into two watercourses that widen into a large river delta & flow into the Bay of Bengal a few miles above Machilipatnam. Godāvari drains Mahārāshtra (48.6), Telingāna (18.8), Andhra Pradesh (4.5), Chhattisgarh (10.9), Madhya Pradesh (10.0), Odishā (5.7) & Karnataka (1.4) through her network of tributaries which, put together, account for 24.2 of the total basin area with an annual average water inflow of nearly 110 billion cubic metres. Measuring up to 312,812 km square or 120,777 sq. miles (which is nearly one-tenth of the area of India & is greater than the areas of England & Ireland put together) it forms the third largest drainage basin (after Gungā & Indus) in the Indian subcontinent. All along her banks are places of pilgrimage for thousands of years.
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