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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Tsangpo: The last mystery
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Tsangpo: The last mystery

From 1715, many explorers tried to map the massive river from source to sea. One enigma endured into the 21st century: where did it enter India?

Crossing a bridge over the river in Arunachal Pradesh. Photographs by Harish KapadiaPremium
Crossing a bridge over the river in Arunachal Pradesh. Photographs by Harish Kapadia

We were standing at a bend in the river. Flowing fast from the Tibetan plateau, it made a large “S" turn and came rushing towards us. It is a river known by many names: In Tibet, it is the Yarlung Tsangpo, Siang (or Dihang) where it enters India, and Brahmaputra as it descends further down into Assam. We could see the mouth of the Nugong Asi nala flowing from the snow-capped Dapang peak (5,570m) in Tibet merging with the Siang, marking the official boundary between India and China. At the head of the valley was the Shugden gompa, which was reached by Frederick Marshman Bailey—explorer, spy, naturalist—in 1912, when he went on an unauthorized exploration of the Tsangpo gorges. He was unaware that he was so close to the Siang he had been searching for.

We had reached a point that explorers had been trying to reach for decades. It was a historical moment—the last piece of an almost century-old puzzle: the place where the Tsangpo enters India.

The riddle of the Tsangpo

As the Tsangpo flowed east across the plateau, it passed Lhasa and Yamdrok Tso lake. Further east, the great massifs of Namcha Barwa (7,756m) and Gyala Peri (7,151m) blocked its course. Map makers were puzzled. Where and how did the Tsangpo cut through those high mountains? Which direction did it take after the gorge?

One school of thought believed it proceeded further east to join the Irrawaddy or the Salween and flowed into Myanmar. Others believed that it flowed southwards into Arunachal Pradesh in India, to be called the Siang. The final question was: Did it flow into the Assam plains to form the Brahmaputra?

The Survey of India deputed the first of its pundit explorers, Nain Singh Rawat, to trace the route of the Tsangpo. These native explorers were trained to survey the area while travelling in disguise. By this time, Tibet was closed to outsiders, but in two epic journeys in 1865 and 1873, Singh followed the course of the river to Lhasa and beyond. Reaching Chetang, east of Lhasa, he was forced to turn south after his subterfuge was revealed to the Chinese. He crossed into India at Tawang.

In 1874, the Assam survey was placed under Lieutenant Henry Harman. He measured the flow of various rivers and found that the flow of the Siang was greater than that of the others, proving that the river was most likely the Tsangpo. He dispatched another pundit explorer, Nem Singh, to Tibet in 1878-79, accompanied by Kinthup, a tailor from Darjeeling. They followed the Tsangpo from Chetang onwards, between the gorge of Namcha Barwa and Gyala Peri, and turned south to reach Gyala Sindong before returning. They made a major contribution, taking the exploration further upstream by 460km.

Harman, now posted in Darjeeling, again deputed Kinthup to Tibet in 1880. As Kinthup was illiterate, a Chinese lama accompanied him. From Darjeeling, they went to Lhasa and followed the course of the Tsangpo to Chetang and Gyala Sindong. Around 24km later, they reached Pemakochung village, where the Tsangpo fell 150ft in a waterfall which came to be known as the “rainbow falls".

Unfortunately, the Chinese lama sold Kinthup into slavery at a monastery and disappeared. Kinthup escaped two years later and reached Marpung, 56km downstream, where he was captured. He was, however, allowed to go on a pilgrimage—he crossed the Tsangpo to the opposite bank and prepared 500 logs with special markings. As arranged, these were to be thrown into the river. If they appeared in the Brahmaputra in the Assam plains, it would conclusively prove the course of the river.

He sent a letter to Harman about this, but the Englishman had already left India, and the letter remained unopened. Unaware, Kinthup returned to Marpung and threw the logs into the river. He followed the Tsangpo downstream as far as Onlet, a small village in Arunachal Pradesh. He could see the haze of the Assam plains and a small village on the banks of the Tsangpo in India. He was about 64km in a straight line from the border. He concluded that the Tsangpo did indeed flow into the Brahmaputra.

He returned to Darjeeling in 1884 and resumed tailoring. Two years later, he was debriefed by the Survey of India, but no one believed him. It was only in 1913, after a report by Bailey, that Kinthup’s description was acknowledged as remarkably accurate.

Aerial photography and satellite imagery have now confirmed beyond doubt that the Tsangpo enters India, is called the Siang, and forms a major tributary of the Brahmaputra.

But despite the hundreds of years of heroic exploration, political wrangling and riverside skirmishes, no one had actually seen the spot where the Tsangpo enters India—a stretch of 100-odd kilometres along the river’s flow in the densely forested mountains of Arunachal Pradesh was still unmapped, undocumented, unseen.

Into the mountains

The first thing one has to ensure when hiring a taxi in the mountains, apart from good tyres, a good driver and enough diesel, is to see that it has a good music player. Hill drivers are addicted to driving with music; anything will do as long as it makes enough noise to keep them company. In fact, when fog and rain make visibility poor, the volume of music is made louder and louder to enable the driver to concentrate better. Our taxi had a tape player with a unique feature: It ran at a higher speed than normal, making male singers sound like women. As far as female singers were concerned, the less said the better.

Driving along a narrow potholed road on National Highway 52, the driver took inspiration from the tape and raced along. Somehow, we reached Tuting safely in three days, and were soon trekking along the Siang.

The first halt was at Gelling. The next day, an hour’s walk later, we crossed the Siang on a suspension bridge, 200m long, improvised from bamboo twine. Like all such bridges in Arunachal Pradesh—called foot-suspension bridges, or FSBs—it swung sideways, jumped up and down, and one had to maintain a careful balance.

We climbed up to a small village called Bishing, past a huge waterfall, called Sibi Dingo, which was about 160m high, picking up two local guides for the next leg of the journey.

To Guyor La, on the Line of Actual Control

From Bishing, we had to descend to the river. As we walked through the village, the women, busy with their morning chores, nodded their heads, murmuring, “You will never reach down and if you do, will never come up, at least not easily." It was unnerving, but how right they were.

The steep descent was a nightmare. The only supports on that slippery slope were the roots of trees. They were lifesavers—you had to hold them so firmly that you almost forgot you were using your feet too. After descending almost 5,000ft, we reached the banks of the Tsangpo.

With that first challenge out of the way, we were introduced to more FSBs, and then came the steep ladders over rock cliffs. The trails in Arunachal Pradesh are so sheer that the villagers often build ladders up the rocks. These are generally made of two large blocks of wood, with other smaller wood planks nailed into them. Some of them were as high as 60m, while others were erected across entire rock faces, with the river flowing dangerously below.

Our guide, Yonton, walked in front, preparing a trail through the impenetrable forest, hacking the vegetation in front of him. The other guide, Shering, cleared the thick branches above that usually rain a shower of leeches, snakes and insects.

This was, fortunately, the best season (without rain) to be trekking in these forests. Though the thick vegetation ensured that the humidity, even with the Himalayan air, was oppressive (we were only around 1,500m above sea level), in the monsoon, we would have been covered in leeches and attacked by snakes. For us, the only saving grace was that you don’t see too many snakes in winter.

The ngarba (Russell’s viper) is found in these parts. Its two long fangs mean that anyone bitten has little chance of survival. We saw one such snake, and before we could have a real look, our porter cut its head off. For them, it was a delicacy, and they had a feast that night.

On another occasion, the porter jumped ahead with his dah, which they all carry, and butchered a snake. This one wasn’t eaten, for it wasn’t poisonous—only a poisonous snake is considered delicious.

A similar fate met any animal that came our way; birds were killed with an accurate strike of the catapult. We eat anything that walks, except human beings, and anything that flies, except aeroplanes, our porters told us.

It took us an hour or two to make a clearing in the forest to camp. It was dark by 4pm and a fire burned all night to keep the porters warm and drive away insects and snakes. We would start walking at about 4am, once there was adequate light. I voiced the fear that rats would eat our food. The guide responded: “Where will you find rats? The locals have nearly eaten them all."

The next day, we climbed up to Guyor La (1,760m), a pass on the McMahon Line, on the border with China. A rusted metal plate nailed to a tree bore the Ashoka lion insignia, marking Indian territory. This, then, was the demarcation between two great nations, a disputed international line!

The day after, we made the steep descent to the river and camped on the bank of the Siang. There was no dearth of firewood, the riverbank was strewn with driftwood. We were reminded of the remarkable effort by Kinthup to throw logs in the river. Who knew, perhaps one of those pieces was still lying there.

The bend in the river

Huge rocks offered vantage points for photography. Steep slopes covered with impenetrable forest made the “spur tip", the border point, inaccessible, though it was only a little distance away. We stood there spellbound. This, then, was the last unexplored point on the great river, the exact spot where it entered India.

From here, it will flow past Tuting, meet the Siyom river, and make its way into Assam, where it will be joined by the Lohit and the Dibang, till it finally reaches Bangladesh.

There was one coda to the trip. On the way back, I slipped and was carried down the slope for almost 150ft on loose, wet gravel. I fell head first, but luckily came to a halt on a small grassy patch and rolled over gently on a huge rock. It would have been very different had I reached those rocks at some speed. My nose was bleeding and I was covered in scratches. But except for one sharp hit on my right hip, I was intact.

I climbed up the steep slope to reach the main trail, and with the help of the sturdy porters, walked back to the camp in a painful 4-hour trek.

The writer has adapted this article from his book, Into The Untravelled Himalaya: Travels, Treks And Climbs.

Harish Kapadia is a mountaineer and explorer and the author of numerous books on exploring in the Himalayas.

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Published: 18 Jul 2015, 12:15 AM IST
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