Riddle Of The Tsangpo Gorge

kullukid

Here is a thread i started on another "India travel forum" which i thought some of you may find interesting. You can see the replies & lots more info on the subject here http://www.theindiatree.com/forum2/i...showtopic=1023



One place i find fascinating is the Tsangpo Gorge in Tibet. The Tsangpo river starts it's life near the holy Mount Kailash meanders through the Himalayas & eventually re-appears out of the foothills in northern Assam. Up until the early 1900s no one had connected or associated the two rivers as been the same river, the reason for this been that the Tsangpo disappears from the Tibetan plains into the mountainous dense jungle of the Tsangpo Gorge at about 10,000ft above sea level whereas the Brahmaputra emerges out of the Assam foothills on to the plains of India at about 500ft above sea level. The distance between these 2 places is only around 200miles which means the river would have to drop over 9000ft over a distance of 200miles which the British explorers & officials of the time thought to be a preposterous claim & could not accept.
In the 1800s the British administration survey of India were secretly mapping & surveying closed areas around the Himalayas such as Tibet, in order to do this they trained native Indians known as the famous Pundits of the Great Game. They taught them to travel in disguise as pilgrims etc & made them special equipment for measuring distances & altitudes such as walking sticks that contained thermometers so they could take the boiling point of water which would establish their altitude & rosary (malla) beads strung with a 100 beads instead of the usual 108 used by Tibetans, these were used for measuring distances, they also had prayer wheels which contained compasses.
One of these Pundits was a Chinese lama? he was sent off with a Sikkimese tailor called Kintup, there mission to follow the river map it & prove once & for all whether the 2 rivers were 1.
After much adventure & hardship they finally reached a small monastery called Pemakochung, this was as far up the Gorge as they could get so they retraced their steps to tibetan fort called Tongkyuk Dzong where the Chinese lama vanished & a while later Kintup realised he had actually sold him into slavery. After 10 months Kintup managed to escape & made his way to a monastery called Marpung but unfortunately his former master sent men to recapture him, they soon arrived at the monastery but luckily for Kintup the abbot of the monastery took pity on him & bought him off them for 50 rupees. The abbot was a kind man & several times he let Kintup go on pilgrimage & trusted him to return. The first time he asked to go to Lhasa & once he got there he sent a letter back to India to a Lt. Harman of the survey of India saying that as planned he was going to drop 500 1ft long logs which he was to bore & insert a tin tube into the river on a certain date, the idea been that Harman could instruct his men to watch for the logs down stream. Kintup then returned to the abbot & at a later date asked to go on another pilgrimage. This time he found a cave close to the river prepared the logs & threw them into the river on the said date. Unbeknownst to Kintup, Lt. Harman had fallen ill, left India & 5 mths later died of pneumonia, so no-one actually recieved his letter. Eventually the abbot gave Kintup his freedom & he made his way home to Darjeeling, he had been away 4yrs. It wasn't until 2yrs after this that Harmans replacement Col. Tanner summonsed Kintup to headquarters for debriefing. Kintup was illiterate & didn't speak good English but with an interpreter he managed to clearly recall his journey from memory at which point he mentioned a giant waterfall at Pemakochung.
The mention of this waterfall caused great excitement amongst the British explorers & surveyors, because they thought the only way the river could drop so quickly over such a short distance was if there were 1 or several waterfalls exceeding the height of Niagra falls.
This caught the attention of a Capt. FM Bailey who set off in 1911 to survey the river & find the waterfall with a Capt Morshead. You can read about this in a book Bailey wrote called "No Passport To Tibet" They also made it to the area of Pemako where Bailey is famous for finding the blue poppy named (meconopsis baileyi) They also found a waterfall which Bailey reckoned to be only about 30ft they named it Rainbow Falls. The weather & landscape of the area was so treacherous & unpredictable that no matter how hard they tried there was a 10 mile gap that remained impenetrable.
The next person to take up the challenge was Francis Kingdon Ward a famous planthunter who introduced thousands of himalayan flowers & rhoddedendrons to England He wrote several books on the area such as "The land of the blue poppy" & "The riddle of the Tsangpo Gorge"
But what fascinates me more than any of this about the Tsangpo Gorge is the Buddhist stories of a secret paradise in the area of Pemako. According to Buddhist legend/history? the great tantric teacher Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche) magically sealed off an area around Pemako where he hid secret treasure texts known as Terma, these can only be found at the right time by the (karmically) right person known as a Terton or treasure finder (& many others have been found which were hidden by him in other areas of Tibet India & Nepal) the places where these Terma are hidden are known as Beyuls or "sacred hidden lands" or "Powerplaces". Padmasambhava had described Pemako to the Tibetans as a paradise that they could escape to in times of trouble & rumour has it that the entrance to this hidden paradise is behind a waterfall. The Terma are directions that are supposed to lead the pilgrims to these promised lands.
In the early '90s an American called Ian Baker & an Iranian called Hamid Sardar who were both living in Kathmandu & were both heavily into Tibetan studies & could speak Tibetan both decided they would go in search of these hidden lands & made several visits to the area over about a five year period. At this time the Chinese were also sending teams of researchers into the area to try & find the "Hidden falls" & the area also caught the attention of several teams of kayakers & riverrafters who wanted to foolishly try & run the river only to find that they were no match for the river (several died) again several books have been written on "running the river" from memory i think i read 1 called something like "the last river".
One very informative book was written about all of the above in a lot more detail by Michael Macrae & is called "In Search Of Shangrila".
At its highest point the Gorge is 3 miles deep which makes it the deepest Gorge in the world. kk

kullukid

Here's a bit more info on the area:
If anything i haven't really got across just how impenetrable this area of mountainous sub-tropical jungle is & what permanently severe weather conditions the explorers had to face. Here's a few quotes from Micheal McRaes "In Search Of Shangrila:-
" Moreshead worked tirelessly & seemed utterly fearless "I believe he thought so little about danger that he didn't realize that there was such a thing as risk" wrote Bailey "He would stand there covered with leeches & with blood oozing out of his boots as oblivious as a small child whose face is smeared with jam"
"Advancing up the gorge, they came across a camp of fleshless skeletons in rotting clothes- The remains of the Tibetan refugees on their fatal retreat. The track vanished into claustrophobic thickets of bamboo where the trees grew so close together that it was impossible for a man to sqeeze between them. Hacking their way through in pouring rain, they trudged uphill to passes covered with waist deep snow. Five of the coolies went temporarily snowblind and Bailey touched off an avalanche".
Bailey & Moreshead also had to pass through the tribal areas of the Mishmis & Abhors ( who were experts at using poisonous arrows) in northern Assam just after they had massacred the British political officer of Assam Noel Williamson & thirty nine of his men.
Heres another quote from McRaes book on how the massacre came about:
" Williams & his men had crossed the Dhiang into Abhor territory despite warnings from friendly locals that the party risked being attacked. Brushing aside the advice, he marched upriver for several days until a number of his Nepalies coolies became sick. Williamsons medical officer, Dr Gregorson, sent the three worst cases back for treatment, along with a courier bearing letters about the progress of the expedition. The men backtracked to the Abhor village of Rotung, where they were welcomed. But that night the self-aggrandizing messenger decided to impress his hosts and took out the letters,flourishing them for all to see-a huge mistake.
The envelopes were white but bordered in black, to mourn the death of king Edward V11. Each had been sealed with red wax. The village cheifs asked the significance of the colors, and as Bailey explains, the messenger answered:
"You see this white? That is for the two white men (Williamson & Dr Gregorson). And this black line round them is Indian Military Police guard which surrounds them."
"And the red" said the Abhor, knowing that in his own tribe the symbol for anger was the red of scarlet chillies "that means anger?"
"Yes" said the letter carrier "Great anger."
The letters, the village headman decided, must not be delivered to British authorities. After the coolies and couriers left Rotung the next morning, they were ambushed & killed. Then the Abors chased down and slaughtered Williamson, Gregorson and most of the remaining porters.
When Baker & Sardar were there in the '90s their porters warned them not to accept food or drink from anyone because the southern gorge was the home of a poisoning cult whose practitioners (all women) believe that they gain merit by doing away with unsuspecting victims, which may include monks & even their own husbands & children. According to McRae "the women make the poison by first burying an egg. When a mushroom sprouts at the spot, they paint half their faces black & braid one side of their hair. Under the light of a full moon, they say a vow to use the poisonous mushroom. If their intended victim is suspicious, they ask him or her to try the proffered food or drink first, then add the poison afterwards by concealing it under a fingernail, or administer it in the night by scratching the person."
Apparently the famous Sherpa Tenzings wife was poisoned & killed by them on a pilgrimage to Pemako, she dictated a letter to her Lama on her death bed saying "I have made it to Pemako. My life is complete."
What i also failed to mention in my last post was the fact that about 5 miles of the river near Pemako as remained unexplored, because it is so inpenetrable (or magically sealed by Padmasambhava?). I also didn't mention that when Kingdon Ward arrived in the area he managed to reach a ledge that looked down on the Rainbow falls & from there he could see another larger falls about a quarter of a mile downstream but the terrain was so impassable that he could not get anywhere near it. (According to local legend there are 75 hidden falls in this 5 mile sealed gap)
In the late '90s Ian Baker (backed by the National Geographic) managed to reach these falls with a film crew (This travel documentary has been shown on the Geo channel a few times over the years) With the help of climbing gear Baker managed to scramble 1000s of feet down the gorge to a ledge above the falls from where he measured these falls to be a touch over a 100ft, however Mc Rae says when they had stopped filming Baker & another managed to scramble right down to river level below the falls & mysteriously when he took readings from here the fall was exactly 108 ft (A very important number to Tibetan Buddhists). Baker was convinced that these falls were the portal to the "hidden lands" & if he strained his neck from where he stood he could see that just behind the falls there appeared to be a vaginal split (pardon my french) in the rock. He named these falls "The hidden falls of Dorje Phagmo" (The Sow Headed Goddess).
The reason he chose this name is because he was very interested in Tibetan symbolic landscapes which the Tsangpo river & gorge & the area around Pemako are. Here's what McRae says on the subject:
"According to texts that Baker began collecting, Pemakos energy is essentially feminine, which also appealed to him. The Gorge & surrounding mountains are physical manifestations of the Goddess Dorje Phagmo , whose suppine form reclines across the landscape. Features of the topography represent parts of her anatomy. Her heart for example, is Padma-shel-ri, the lotus crystal mountain that pilgrims & refugees have long sought in vain. Gyala peri, the summit on the north side of the Tsangpo, is her head. Namche Barwa, south of the river, is her right breast, while a peak called Zumchen Phagmo Dong- The Radiantly Smiling Sow -face Mountain- is her left one. Her vagina or yoni, lies across the Tibet-India border at a promontory called Choying Gyeltsen, ,Victory Banner Of Infinite Space from which issues a stream of the Dakinis (celestial nymphs) sexual fluids. The Tsangpo itself is Dorje Phagmos central meridian, her main energy channel. She is depicted dancing, and a small sows head emerging from her neck. The sow represents ignorance. and the Goddess's dance is one of joy at having cast off the viels of ignorance. By meditating on both her form and the landscape in Pemako, pilgrims attempt to approach her state of penetrating awareness." KK
Here's a link to what the gorge looks like around the waterfalls area: http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthrea...78/an/0/page/1

greenman

kullukid

WOW!Fantastic Greenman, but how did you manage to upload something that big? I can't upload anything over 100kb
Some comments would be nice, is this Gyala Peri? Have you been to the area? did you take the photo? KK

PeakXV

KK, if you upload any photo to your website and place the address inside the IMG tags - 100k ++ is possible. It only truncates the photo when you use IM as the host.

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kullukid

Thanks Peak, i'll give it a go.By the way do you know TS Eliot is an anagram of toilets! KK

PeakXV

I tell ya - you learn things on IM that you would find in no other intellectual book/library/website in the world. Kudos to you KK for being Johnny-on-the-spot with that breaking(wind) news!


Tsangpo stuff is interesting ... I remember seeing a National Geographic explorer doc called "Secrets of the Tsangpo" back in thr 90's and have always wanted to learn more .....

kullukid

Hi Peak,That'll be the doc i keep harping on about, was it the 1 where they found the hidden waterfalls? Amazing stuff!
I've just finished reading a brilliant book by Ian Baker describing in great detail all their adventures into the area. I've read everthing written about Pemako & the Tsangpo Gorge,but the quality of Bakers storytelling far exceeds all the others, it's called The Heart of the World
A Journey to Tibet's Lost Paradise
I Googled it & managed to get a brand new penguin copy for £4 it's a very thick book oozing with detail & some great adventures
tales. Check it out! KK

PeakXV

Yes, that was the one. I was sure I had taped it .... but can't seem to find it or have subsquently taped over it.

Anyway I'll shake the piggybank and see if I can find a copy of Baker's book on ABE et al!

greenman

Thats Namche Barwa(north face as far as I can work out which is one of the largest in the world), I'v not visited the area but I was considering doing so this autumn before cost and problems getting permits made me deside to go to Sikkim instead. I visited western Yunnan/Sichuan in China last year and was blown away by some of the scenery and I'd imagine that area's even more impressive, very green and unlike the general image you get of the Tibetan plateau.

I'v come close to buying this re release of Frank Kingdom Wards book on the area a few times, the travel agent I was using had a copy and some of the pics were amazing.

kullukid

I had that book out of the library a few weeks ago it's got some of the most stunning photos i've seen (even on IM)got it mainly for the photo's as i've already read all about K.W.s adventures in the area i have a couple of old penguin books by him "Land of the blue poppy" is one of them. Ask your local library to track 1 down for you the one i had is in Moortown library in Leeds. KK

kullukid

Here's what It looks like in the Rainbow & Hidden falls area. KK
http://www.ees.lehigh.edu/groups/cor...po-ikonos.html

AvidTrekker

WOW.... thats where i should be going !!!

In this photo I cannot make out the actual gorge that Ian Baker showed on Nat'l Geographic. [which hides the supposed vertical cleft opening] from what the photo shows, its a general drop accompanied by the sharp curves of the river. Ian Baker showed a sharp vertical drop where he rappelled down. Cant make out the rappelling portion in this photo...

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machadinha

I'd rather you didn't. Those photos in threads are a b*tch on low-bandwidth users, and they'll only find out once they open a page.

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PeakXV

I've gotta have the slowest baud rate connection in the world from my tree fort in the Acadian forest ..... and 1 large photo/page of/for a thread theme isn't bad time wise for loading at all. It's a tough call though between service provided and quality/resolution - when the photo has been compressed a couple of times - it kinda of loses it's detailed beauty very quickly.