THE DISCOVERY OF THE SOURCE OF THE INDUS
Immediately on my arrival in Khaleb I told the old gova, who had the
hopeless and thankless task of watching my proceedings, that I now
intended to take the road past Singi-kabab, or the source of the Indus.
"If you go thither, Bombo," he answered, "I shall at once send a courier
to the Garpuns, the two chiefs in Gartok."
"I do not think that the Garpuns will have any objection to my taking a
more northerly route."
"Oh yes, the Garpuns received orders from Lhasa five days ago to watch
carefully that you followed no other way but the great high-road to
Gartok. The Garpuns straightway sent couriers to twelve different
places--Parka, Misser, Purang, Singtod, and others--to make it known
that you were not permitted to travel on byroads. If this letter had not
reached me, I would willingly have let you march northwards, but now I
dare not for my own sake."
"What would you do if I quietly disappeared one night? I can buy yaks in
Tarchen, and then I shall not be dependent on those I have from you."
"Yes, of course. A man lives in Tarchen who has sixty yaks, and will
sell them as soon as he sees silver money. But I shall at once send word
to the Garpuns, and they will send men after you and force you to come
back. To buy yaks would therefore be useless waste of money. However, if
you like to let the main part of your caravan follow the high-road, and
make yourself an excursion of a couple of days northwards to the
Singi-kabab, and then join your caravan again, I will put no obstacles
in your way. But you do it at your own risk, and you will most certainly
be caught before you reach the source of the Indus."
I was as much astonished as delighted by this sudden change in the
attitude of the gova, and arranged with Robert that he should lead the
main caravan in very short day's marches to Gartok, while I made as
rapidly as possible for the source of the Indus. I took only as many
things as a small leathern trunk would contain, and as companions only
five men, among them Rabsang as interpreter and Adul as cook, with our
own six animals and three dogs, one of which, a new purchase, ran away
on the first day. I had Robert's small tent, and our arsenal consisted
of two guns and a revolver, for robbers were said to make the country
very unsafe. I could not find a guide, but on the way to Diri-pu, where
I encamped once more, I came across an old man from Tok-jalung, who
wished to make the round of Kailas thirteen times, and gave me much
valuable information. But no money could induce him to accompany us
farther.
On the 8th we continued our way through the valley that runs
north-north-eastwards from Diri-pu to the Tseti-la. The stream, divided
into many arms, was covered in the night by a thin coating of ice,
smooth as glass, where the water had run off, but it disappeared when
day came. The valley is broad, and the road showed traces of
considerable traffic, though we did not meet a soul. The marmots
whistled in front of their holes; the summer would soon be over for
them. Kang-rinpoche can be seen from many places, and here pilgrims from
the north have piled up cairns. Granite predominates everywhere, but
crystalline schists occur here and there. We followed the fresh tracks
of three horsemen. The gradient became steeper and the scenery assumed
more of an alpine character. We mounted up among huge cones of detritus
with babbling brooks of melted snow to the pass, which lay at a height
of 18,465 feet. Its plateau is singularly flat. On its northern side
camp No. 234 was pitched.
In the evening Rabsang reported that our fuel-gatherers had heard
whistles, and that these signals had been answered from the other side.
The men believed that there were robbers here, and did not dare to sit
outside by the fire lest they should be good marks for shots out of an
ambush. I quieted them with the assurance that no robber would venture
to attack a European, but gave orders to the watchmen to keep an eye on
our animals.
The night passed quietly and the minimum temperature went down to 16.2°;
autumn was come again into dreary Tibet. I had supposed that the
Tseti-la was the pass on the main divide, but we had not gone far when
we saw its brook, which flowed northwards, make a bend to the west, and
descend through a well-defined valley to the Dunglung. It therefore
belongs to the catchment basin of the Sutlej and not to the Indus, and
the Tseti-la is a pass of secondary order. But we soon reached the
actual pass, an extremely flat threshold. Here lies a small muddy lake
drained by a brook issuing from its eastern side, which we followed all
day. This pass is the Tseti-lachen-la, and it is a water-parting between
the Sutlej and the Indus. Its height is less than that of the Tseti-la,
for it is only 17,933 feet; it lies on the main chain of the
Trans-Himalaya. Kailas, therefore, lies a good day's journey south of
the watershed of the two rivers, and belongs entirely to the basin of
the Sutlej.
From the lake we follow the little affluent of the Indus northwards. The
ground is marshy and rough. Here and there are seen three hearthstones.
A dead horse lies among the luxuriant grass. It is singular that no
nomads are encamped here. At length we see at a far distance quite down
in the valley men going downstream with large flocks of sheep. Tundup
Sonam and Ishe are sent after them, and by degrees the rest of us come
up with the party. They are nomads from Gertse, who have taken salt to
Gyanima and are now transporting barley on their 500 sheep. All the
valley is dotted over with white sheep, which trip along actively,
plucking the grass as they go. In front of us rises a steep purple
mountain chain, and along the flank turned towards us the Indus is said
to flow. We joined the men of the sheep caravan and camped together with
them. There were five of them, all armed with guns, and they said that
the district was frequently haunted by robbers, who at times seemed to
vanish altogether, and then suddenly came down like a whirlwind, and no
one knew whence they came.
Our camping-ground on the bank of the Indus (16,663 feet) is called
Singi-buk. Eastwards the valley is broad and open, but the Indus itself
is here an insignificant stream. I was therefore not astonished when I
heard that it was only a short day's journey to the source, which, I was
told, does not proceed from snow or a glacier, but springs up out of the
ground. The men called the river the Singi-tsangpo, or Singi-kamba, and
the source itself Singi-kabab, though we afterwards heard the word
pronounced Senge more frequently than Singi.
It turned out that one of the five men knew all about us. He was a
brother of the Lobsang Tsering on the Dungtse-tso who had sold us three
yaks the winter before (see Chapter XV.). It was a singular chance that
we should fall in with him. He said he had heard how well we had treated
his brother, and offered us his services--for a good reward, of course.
As he had travelled several times through this region, quite unknown to
Europeans, and was acquainted with all the passes, roads, and valleys, I
thought he would be very valuable to me, and I proposed to give him 7
rupees a day, that is about half a month's pay of one of my Ladakis. Of
course he accepted the terms at once and soon became our intimate
friend.
But these business matters were not yet settled. The man had a quantity
of sheep and barley. He consented to let us eight sheep on hire, and
sell us their loads, which would last our horses for a week. He was to
receive a rupee for the hire of each sheep, which was high, for a sheep
is worth only 2 to 3 rupees. The old man would therefore receive 18
rupees every evening as long as he was with us; but it was cheap after
all, for the discovery of the source of the Indus was involved.
[Illustration: 279, 280, 281. AT THE MONASTERY DOOR IN TASHI-GANG
BETWEEN GARTOK AND LADAK.]
The large sheep-caravan had already started on September 10, when we,
with our new guide, whose own _tsamba_ was carried on a ninth sheep,
followed in its track. After an hour's march we crossed a tributary, the
Lungdep-chu, which comes from a valley in the south-east, with flattish
mountains in the background.
A little farther up the Singi-kamba expands into a basin containing an
abundance of medium-sized fish. As we passed, the fish were darting
upstream in compact shoals, and passed a very shallow place with slight
swirls. Here Rabsang attacked them, but all his catch was only one small
miserable fish. Then we threw up a dam by the bank, with an opening on
one side, and the men went into the water and drove in the fish with
shouts and splashing. Then the entrance was built up. After we had
repeated this diversion three times, we had procured thirty-seven fine
fish, and I was eager for my dinner, which I usually looked forward to
with some loathing, for the hard dried mutton had become thoroughly
distasteful to me. Our old man, who sat and watched us, thought that we
had taken leave of our senses. Farther up, the fish were so crowded in a
quiet pool that they made the water seem almost black with their dark
backs.
We rode up the valley, leaving on our right a red, loaf-shaped mountain
called Lungdep-ningri. Opposite, on the northern side of the valley,
were seen two fine Ovis Ammon sheep feeding on a conical elevation. They
bore splendid horns, and carried their heads royally. They soon
perceived us, and made slowly up the slope. But they paid too much
attention to our movements, and did not notice that Tundup Sonam, with
his gun on his back, was making a detour to stalk them from the other
side of the hill. After a while we heard a shot, and a good hour later,
when the camp was pitched, Tundup came back laden with as much of the
flesh of his victim as he could carry. Thus we obtained a fresh addition
to our somewhat scanty rations, and Tundup's exploit enhanced the glory
of this memorable day. In the evening he went off again to fetch more
meat, and he brought me the head of the wild sheep, which I wished to
preserve as a memento of the day at the source of the Indus.
The ground rises exceedingly slowly. Singi-yüra is a rugged cliff to the
north, with a large hole through its summit. Singi-chava is the name of
a commanding eminence to the south. Then we wade through the outflow of
the Munjam valley running in from the south-east. Above this the Indus
is only a tiny brook, and part of its water comes from a valley in the
south-east, the Bokar. A little later we camp at the aperture of the
spring, which is so well concealed that it might easily be overlooked
without a guide.
From the mountains on the northern side a flattish cone of detritus, or,
more correctly, a slope bestrewn with rubbish, descends to the level,
open valley. At its foot projects a slab of white rock with an almost
horizontal bedding, underneath which several small springs well up out
of the ground, forming weedy ponds and the source stream, which we had
traced upwards, and which is the first and uppermost of the headwaters
of the mighty Indus. The four largest springs, where they issued from
the ground, had temperatures of 48.6°, 49.1°, 49.6°, and 50.4°
respectively. They are said to emit the same quantity of water in winter
and summer, but a little more after rainy seasons. Up on the slab of
rock stand three tall cairns and a small cubical _lhato_ containing
votive pyramids of clay. And below the _lhato_ is a quadrangular _mani_,
with hundreds of red flagstones, some covered with fine close
inscriptions, some bearing a single character 20 inches high. On two the
wheel of life was incised, and on another a divine image, which I
carried off as a souvenir of the source of the Indus.
Our guide said that the source Singi-kabab was reverenced because of its
divine origin. When travellers reached this place or any other part of
the upper Indus, they scooped up water with their hands, drank of it,
and sprinkled their faces and heads with it.
[Illustration: 282. DANCING WOMEN IN CHUSHUT, A VILLAGE ON MY WAY BACK
TO LADAK.]
Through the investigations made by Montgomerie's pundits in the year
1867 it was known that the eastern arm of the Indus is the actual
headwater, and I had afterwards an opportunity of proving by measurement
that the western, Gartok, stream is considerably smaller. But no
pundit had succeeded in penetrating to the source, and the one who
had advanced nearest to it, namely, to a point 30 miles from it, had
been attacked by robbers and forced to turn back. Consequently, until
our time the erroneous opinion prevailed that the Indus had its source
on the north flank of Kailas, and, thanks to those admirable robbers,
the discovery of the Indus source was reserved for me and my five
Ladakis.
We passed a memorable evening and a memorable night at this important
geographical spot, situated 16,946 feet above sea-level. Here I stood
and saw the Indus emerge from the lap of the earth. Here I stood and saw
this unpretentious brook wind down the valley, and I thought of all the
changes it must undergo before it passes between rocky cliffs, singing
its roaring song in ever more powerful crescendo, down to the sea at
Karachi, where steamers load and unload their cargoes. I thought of its
restless course through western Tibet, through Ladak and Baltistan, past
Skardu, where the apricot trees nod on its banks, through Dardistan and
Kohistan, past Peshawar, and across the plains of the western Panjab,
until at last it is swallowed up by the salt waves of the ocean, the
Nirvana and the refuge of all weary rivers. Here I stood and wondered
whether the Macedonian Alexander, when he crossed the Indus 2200 years
ago, had any notion where its source lay, and I revelled in the
consciousness that, except the Tibetans themselves, no other human being
but myself had penetrated to this spot. Great obstacles had been placed
in my way, but Providence had secured for me the triumph of reaching the
actual sources of the Brahmaputra and Indus, and ascertaining the origin
of these two historical rivers, which, like the claws of a crab, grip
the highest of all the mountain systems of the world--the Himalayas.
Their waters are born in the reservoirs of the firmament, and they roll
down their floods to the lowlands to yield life and sustenance to fifty
millions of human beings. Up here white monasteries stand peacefully on
their banks, while in India pagodas and mosques are reflected in their
waters; up here wolves, wild yaks, and wild sheep, roam about their
valleys, while down below in India the eyes of tigers and leopards
shine like glowing coals of fire from the jungles that skirt their
banks, and poisonous snakes wriggle through the dense brushwood. Here in
dreary Tibet icy storms and cold snowfalls lash their waves, while down
in the flat country mild breezes whisper in the crowns of the palms and
mango trees. I seemed to listen here to the beating of the pulses of
these two renowned rivers, to watch the industry and rivalry which,
through untold generations, have occupied unnumbered human lives, short
and transitory as the life of the midge and the grass; all those
wanderers on the earth and guests in the abodes of time, who have been
born beside the fleeting current of these rivers, have drunk of their
waters, have drawn from them life and strength for their fields, have
lived and died on their banks, and have risen from the sheltered freedom
of their valleys up to the realms of eternal hope. Not without pride,
but still with a feeling of humble thankfulness, I stood there,
conscious that I was the first white man who had ever penetrated to the
sources of the Indus and Brahmaputra.