river diaries_ brahmaputra — the spy who went in to the cold early 1800s, asia_

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R I V E R D I A R I E S :B R A H M A P U T R A

Commissioned by

Rivers. They sustain hundreds of millions of people around the

world and are home to a hundred thousand creatures. These

veins of a land are also often ground zero for water-wars.

Traditional riparian communities and denizens of the river butt

heads with the new world as dams, diversions, canals choke,

siphon off, and desiccate their lifelines. Voices get shriller and

stakes rise ever higher should a river cross international

boundaries.

In this war of needs and wants, who will prevail? At what cost?

I travel to the Brahmaputra river basin over the next year to

document life along its wild braids as it weaves through three

densely populated, thirsty, energy-voracious countries.

A R A T I K U M A R - R A O

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The Spy Who Went In ToThe Cold

Early 1800s, Asia:

A Great Game played out on the chessboard of Central

Asia and Tibet in the 19th century.

The Russian Tsar moved in from the North, the British

Raj countered from the South. Russian tentacles reached

out to snag the Khanates of Khiva, Bukharo, Khoqand,

Tashkent – and then the Tsar turned his attention

eastward.

The British, ensconced firmly in South Asia, leached into

Afghanistan and watched anxiously as the Tsar’s men

closed in on the prize: Tibet.

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The Qing Emperor in China, threatened from both sides,

sealed Tibet’s borders. “Any Moghul, Hindustani,

Pathan, or Feringhi” found in Tibet would be put to

death, he decreed.

And any Tibetan aiding or assisting foreigners would

meet the same fate. They were true to their word —

Europeans found trespassing in Tibet met gory ends.

Besides the strategic anxiety over the Russians breaking

the ice in Tibet first, the Raj faced other dilemmas of a

more cartographic nature. Where exactly was Lhasa?

Did that big river Tsangpo in Tibet flow from Lake

Manasarovar? Where did it drain into the sea? Did it

meet the Brahmaputra that flows fatly in Assam? And if

not, does it meet the Irrawaddy or the Yangtze or the

Salween? All these rivers flow in parallel not 50 miles

from one another.

There was a particular interest in the Tsangpo. If it met

the Brahmaputra, which was in British control, then

could it serve as a water-route for goods, men,

troops, and the Raj into Tibet? How did a river on a high

plateau of over 9000ft descend to the plains? Visions of

undiscovered grand cataracts consumed the explorers of

the Raj.

The Crown wanted to know, and its adventurous

officers were just as hungry to find out.

But Tibet in the 1800s was a death trap for any

European. The British would have to find another way to

map the Tsangpo and Tibet.

They did.

Spring 1914, Darjeeling Bazaar:



A Lepcha tailor, around 65 years old, thickset and

strong, wearing clothes mended several times over,

hunches over Raj uniforms, marking them up with the

triangular blue tailor’s chalk in his hand. His leathery

hands and a face to match betrays a life lived outdoors.

His name is Kintup but he is known secretly as ‘KP’.

He has just been told that he is to present himself at the

Survey of India’s office in Simla at his earliest.

May 1914, Simla, Survey of India office:

FM Bailey, a smart, young British officer, greets the

tailor, who he knows as KP, with reverence. Bailey has

just returned from extensive travel in Tibet – a trip he

could not have completed successfully without KP’s

notes. Now he has questions for him, one explorer to

another. He wants clarifications and, more than anything

else, he wants to hear KP’s stories first hand –

especially of his journey to the Tsangpo, 1880 through

1884.

Summer of 1880, Darjeeling Bazaar:

Kintup is in his shop, marking up an officer’s uniform

with his blue chalk. He has never been to school, he

cannot even write his name, but the 30-year-old has an

eidetic memory that is already legendary in his village.

His strength and his courage add to his aura; he is the

go-to person for adventurous British officers and

trekkers wanting to scale Sikkim’s mountains.

A Lieutenant Henry John Harman of the Survey of India

is in charge of mapping the northeast frontier and

Assam. The Raj’s mapping agency, The Great

Trigonometric Survey of India, had reduced almost all

of the sub-continent into triangles and measured

everything accessible. They knew the precise height of



Mt. Everest and the precise location of cities from

Baluchistan to Bengal. Tibet, however, remained a

tantalizing void on the map of Asia. It was now up to

Harman and his recruits to fill that void.

The British came up with an ingenious plan to infiltrate

Tibet. They noticed that while foreigners had been

banned entry into The Land of Snows by fiat of the

Chinese emperor, locals from the northern parts of

India, and the hill people, came and went at will, for

pilgrimage and trade.

Captain Montgomerie of The Great Trigonometrical

Survey sought out such people along the border areas:

natives of Sikkim and Darjeeling who could speak

Tibetan and Hindi and pass for pilgrims. He trained them

in basic surveying techniques, and sent them off to

triangulate the positions of lakes and rivers and cities in

Tibet.

How would his recruits carry out such surveys without

arousing suspicion? Montgomerie came up with a

brilliant cover: He made his “pilgrims” carry rosaries and

prayer wheels, sticks and pots. These perfectly valid

accouterments of the pilgrim would become the tools of

the surveyor.

He taught his recruits to walk in a stride that measured

2’7”, which made about 2000 steps to a mile, and to

count off each step with a bead on the rosary.

A Tibetan rosary has 108 beads. Montgomerie reduced

this to 100, and taught his recruits to drop one bead for

every ten steps they took. Every 10th bead was slightly

larger than its fellows. Their walking sticks contained

thermometers for hypsometric readings that could

determine altitude. Their pots had false bottoms for

sextants and extra mercury. The prayer wheel was the



perfect hiding place for a scroll of paper on which each

recruit recorded his findings.

Thus these pilgrim-spies, called the ‘Pundits’, walked

the hitherto unknown terrain of Tibet, counting off their

steps, chanting as they went, making measurements all

the time. And thus they mapped the exact position of

Lhasa, traced the source of the Tsangpo, among other

significant cartographic milestones.

Like Montgomerie, Harman too had an eye for spotting a

potential Pundit – and when he first met Kintup, he

knew he had found a winner.

Since Kintup was illiterate, he was paired with a trained

Pundit, Lama Nem Singh (code named GMN) on his

first foray into Tibet in 1878. Their mission was to walk

the Tsangpo all the way down, to map where it drained.

If they accomplished this, they would have solved the

raging mystery of the Brahmaputra’s origins.

GMN and Kintup followed the Tsangpo east till it

reached a place known as Gyala. Here it vanished under

the massive ice peaks of Namche Barwa and Gyala Peri.

There seemed to be no path, no track, no way of

following the river unless they scaled the sheer rock

spurs.

Intimidated, GMN gave up and returned to India. It

would turn out later that his survey work was shoddy

and his readings were wrong. Kintup, the illiterate side-

kick, used the trip to commit the route to memory, to

understand the terrain, learn the instruments, and

method of measurement. Like a sponge, he soaked it all

up.

He could not write, and hence could not record – but he

knew what the British wanted to know, he had the heart



it took for such a trying expedition, and some in the

Survey realized that.

So he was chosen to follow the Tsangpo again. This

time, he was paired with a Mongolian Lama who was

literate and had the trust of the Survey. (Curiously, this

Lama has no code name in any of the Survey records.)

The pair was to go as far downstream of the Tsangpo

as possible and then, if they could go no further, toss

into the river 500 logs, each a foot long, each

impregnated with a tin tube. They would do this at the

rate of 50 logs a day. The marked logs would float

downstream and, if the Tsangpo did join the

Brahmaputra, the British stationed at Sadiya in Assam

would see them – and thus solve an enduring mystery.

On this trip, Kintup was assigned his own spy-name:

KP.

August 7, 1880, Tibet:

KP and his companion Lama, disguised as Buddhist

pilgrims, crossed the high Himalayas and reached Lhasa

in under a month. The plan did not call for them to halt

in the Tibetan capital – but the Mongolian Lama had

shown time and again that he had little regard for plans.

KP watched in dismay as the Lama squandered Her

Majesty’s resources on feasting with friends in the Sera

Monastery.

KP nagged at the Lama to get a move on. Winter would

soon be upon them, he pointed out. But the Lama paid

no heed.

A full six days later, the pair left and went due east till

Tsetang, where the Lama fell ill. It was here that KP

began to get a sense of what lay ahead on this trip. The

Lama treated KP like a servant. KP complied, knowing



that the Lama was his only cover in Tibet. Should that

cover be blown and he be outed as a spy, a sudden,

violent death was inevitable.

Though outwardly docile, KP was no pushover. He

began to take measurements of his own accord, making

short excursions in the area, observing rivers and

streams and peaks and glaciers, counting off the paces,

noting local customs and place names, and etching

everything in his eidetic memory.

The Lama, meanwhile, was more interested in the good

life, in women and drink. Once he recovered and the

two moved on, he veered KP off course again to a

village known as Thun Tsung. Here he romanced their

host’s wife with his cunning and charm. Uncaring of the

Survey’s task, numbed by copious amounts of the local

brew chhang, the Mongolian Lama frittered away four

months.

When his philandering was found out, he bought his

pardon with KP’s meager savings, and the pair moved

on again. It was March by now, cold and windy with

the last remnants of winter; the skies alternated between

clear and grey, sunshine and snow.

The pair was now close to entering the Tsangpo gorge.

By all accounts, it seems a place breathtaking and

formidable in equal measure. Frank Kingdon-Ward, the

intrepid botanist-explorer describes it vividly:

As the river, rushing like a lost soul between the hot

hell in the heart of the Himalaya and the cold hell on

the wind-swept peaks which guard the gorge, grew

more dynamic, as the scenery grew harsher, and the

thunder of the water more minatory, the touch of

Nature came marvelously to the rescue. Everywhere,

by cliff and rock and scree, by torn scar and ragged



rent, wherever vegetation could get and keep a keen

grip, trees grew; and so, from the grinding boulders

in the river-bed to the grating glaciers above, the

gorge was filled with forest to the very brim.

Ten thousand feet of forest colored those cold greet

rocks of tortured genies; and when the summer rain

weeps softly over the scene of riot a million trees will

flame into flower and strew their beauty over the

ruin.

The pair followed the right bank of the Tsangpo, with its

terraced, irrigated farms and hills banded with prickly

oak and fir. Often, in the gorge, there is no path by the

river and the only way to press on is to hike up a valley

past shepherds who, if you are lucky, will offer you

milk and butter. Here and there the many-fingered

tongues of glaciers reach down to the Tsangpo from the

twin peaks of Gyala Peri and Namche Barwa. And here

is where, high above the river, locals use their nooses to

capture Tibetan eared-pheasants.

All along this route the Tsangpo falls, in continuous

frothy rapids.

Making their way eastward, KP and the Lama reached

the point that was the furthest GMN and Kintup had

reached the previous time: the little village of Gyala.

While the Lama lazed in the village, KP trekked down to

the river and followed a stream that spilled into the

Tsangpo.

Here he saw something wondrous: a 150-foot waterfall

that spilled over a cliff, hiding a mural of the god

Shingche Chogyel. The mural was visible only when the

flow was at its lowest, as in winter.

From Gyala, any progress downstream was uncharted

territory for KP and the Survey. It was also some of the



toughest terrain to navigate, to the uninhabited

monastery Pemakochung, fifteen virgin miles

downstream.

The river at Pemakochung was loud. It screamed and

fumed and writhed and roiled before rushing headlong

40 feet down into dancing, shifting rainbows.

“We camped amongst the boulders, close beside the

thundering river. A quarter of a mile ahead a blank

cliff, striped by two silver threads of water, towered a

thousand feet into the air. The river came up against

this cliff with terrific force, turned sharp to the left and

was lost to view.

We scrambled over the boulders, crossed a belt of

trees and a torrent, and made for the foot of the cliff

in order to see what became of the river; but even

before we got there our ears were filled with a loud

roaring noise. As we turned the corner, and before

we could see straight down the river again, we

caught sight of a great cloud of spray which hung

over the rocks within had a mile of where we stood.

… we stood spellbound, as well we might. The river

here swung round to the west, boring its way between

two mighty spurs which jutted out, one from Gyala

Peri, the other from Sanglung. Cliffs towered up on

both sides, so close together that it seemed one could

almost leap from crag to crag; and the cliffs were

smooth as well as sheer. Only high up against the

skyline did a few trees cling like fur to the worn rock

surface. Obviouslt we could get no further down the

gorge; to scale the cliff seemed equally impossible.”

~ Frank Kingdon-Ward 1924-25

At its most constricted, the river rushes through gorges

whose walls are sheer gneiss 15,000-18000 ft high –



quite possibly the deepest river gorges in the world. Did

this formidable sight, accompanied by the sound of

white water fury, intimidate the Lama? One can only

guess at what made him yank KP off course again.

Reluctantly, KP trudged back inland, to the tiny village

of Tzongyuk Dzong.

Here the Lama asked KP to wait by the river while he

went to meet the local Tibetan official and obtained

passes for them. Three days passed with no sign of the

Lama. KP hid his survey instruments, in case their cover

was blown – and that was just as well, because officials

showed up out of the blue. They searched KP, stripped

him of a compass and a pistol, and vanished.

KP was by now suspicious of the Lama’s shenanigans.

A few days later the Lama showed up, but only to say

he was heading out on some urgent work and he, KP,

was to wait for him at the Dzong Pon’s house.

The Lama never came back. KP was put to work by the

Dzong Pon.

Months dragged by. One day, while he was cleaning the

stables, the full nature of his predicament struck KP: the

Lama had sold him as a slave to the Dzong Pon for 50

rupees, and decamped with the money and a horse. He

now realized why he was being closely watched, and

never allowed outside the Dzong Pon’s compound.

The Lama had abandoned the Survey’s cause and

betrayed the trust it put in him. KP was on his own. Far

from intimidated, the tailor-spy set about looking for

ways to escape.

His chance came ten months later. On March 7, 1882,

he made a dash for freedom under cover of night. He

crossed the foaming Tsangpo by hanging upside down



on a slender single-twisted-bamboo rope. He ran as fast

as his legs could bear him through dense rhododendron

jungles and over high passes and down glaciers, then

crossed back over the dangerously rushing river. He

slept when he could under rock-overhangs, begged

when he could for food and for provisions, all the time

in his guise of pilgrim, till he finally reached a monastery

in Pemako – only to find the Dzong Pon’s men almost

upon him.

Dashing into the monastery with his pursuers hot on his

heels, KP fell at the feet of the Abbott there and begged

asylum, telling him of his enforced slavery and

positioning himself as a devout pilgrim.

The Abbott bought KP’s story, and purchased his

freedom from the Dzong Pon with fifty rupees. Slavery,

again — but the circumstances here were refreshingly

different: KP lived among monks and nuns in an

atmosphere of prayer and butter lamps, rolmo and lag-

naand Tibetan horns, his work consisting largely of

mending the torn robes of the monks.

He had a choice: he could either return home or could

continue down the river, picking up the task of finding

out where the Tsangpo goes. There was no contest in

KP’s mind: his loyalty to the Survey and to Harman was

unwavering. He would not give up, not just yet – he had

500 logs to toss into the river.

After four months of service with the Abbott, KP

begged a few days off to go on a pilgrimage. Impressed

with his devotion, the Abbott granted him leave. KP

grabbed the tin tubes which, luckily, had not been taken

from him, and with his khukri and khurshing (dagger

and sling-bag), set off with renewed vigor, excited at

being able to finally be of some use to the Survey.



Rushing to Giling through valleys brimming with thick

forest, he begged shelter at a monastery there on the

pretext of going in search of salt, and set to work.

Hiding from passersby, curious locals and other

pilgrims, KP began to look for the right trees from

which to fashion 500 logs, each a foot long. He worked

without pausing, slashing away at the trees with

his khukri. KP had listened closely when Lt. Harman had

explained the plan to the Mongolian Lama. They had to

cut the logs, bore a hole in each, and insert a tin tube.

These were then to be tossed, 50 a day, into the foaming

Tsangpo.

KP had no drill. He began to finely strip bamboo, using it

to tie the tubes to the logs as securely as possible. The

task took him several days. He carried the 500 logs to a

cave so remote it was unlikely any human had been

there before.

He now faced a fresh problem – he had to find a way of

getting word to the Survey’s Darjeeling office that he

was ready to toss the logs into the river, so someone

downstream could keep a lookout.

By now, he had been absent from the monastery for a

month, and his gratitude to the Abbot for saving him

from the Dzong Pon tugged at him. He returned to the

Abbott and served him for a bit longer before begging

leave again, this time for a pilgrimage to Tsari, the

second most sacred place in Tibet.

The year was 1882 and the major Buddhist pilgrimage to

Tsari – to be undertaken in the Year of the Monkey —

was still two years away. But KP was intent on reaching

Lhasa to somehow get word to India that he was ready

to toss the logs. And so the intrepid tailor set off again,

to retrace the 250 miles by foot to Lhasa.



The route does not have easily navigable paths even

today. In the 1880s, when no one – not even the locals

— traversed these routes, there was barely a toehold on

some of these spurs and cliffs that KP would have had

to negotiate.

They rock-faces were overgrown with brush and

rhododendron and fir, and made slippery by the rains;

one misstep could mean hurtling down to the

unforgiving river below. And winter brought with it the

risk of biting, whipping winds, snowstorms, sleet and an

intense cold that could cause frostbite – a prospect to

daunt the most intrepid.

It was on the cusp of winter that KP set out for Lhasa.

He chose the high route, the avalanche route over

Doshong La, a pass that soared 13,500 ft above sea

level, and then down to hit the pilgrim road while turned

skyward again to the holy Tsari at 12,000 ft. All along,

the ever alert and observant KP committed distances and

routes to memory. He even picked up interesting legends

and customs along the way, from his conversations with

pilgrims and locals.

He learnt, for instance, that on the Tsari pilgrimage,

women are not allowed all the way up. Why? The

legend goes somewhat thus:

The Goddess Drolma wanted to test the moral

uprightness of men and women. So one day, she

disguised herself and lay down at the summit of the pass

to Tsari. When a man reached her and politely begged

her to move she refused, giving him a choice. He would

have to find an alternate way around the mountain or

step over her.

Rather than step over another human being, the man



went away to look for an alternate path.

Next, a woman reached the disguised Goddess. When

she was given the choice of stepping over the Goddess

or taking a long route over the pass, the woman chose

to step over the Goddess. Enraged, the Goddess took on

her real form and cursed all women. Since then, the

legend went, no female was permitted to undertake the

full pilgrimage.

All this and more KP stored away in his mind and

pressed on, Lhasa-bound. It was December 1882 when

he reached the Tibetan capital. For once his luck held: he

found a Sikkimese Kazi (judge) whose wife was to leave

shortly for India. KP dictated a letter to be taken over

the border to GMN, the leader of his previous

expedition:

Dear Sirs,

The Lama who was sent with me sold me to a Dzong

Pon as a slave and himself fled away with the

Government things that were in his charge, on

account of which the journey proved a bad one.

However I, Kintup, have prepared the five hundred

logs according to the order of the late Captain

Harman and am prepared to throw fifty logs per day

into the Tsangpo from Bipung in Pemakö, from the

5th to the 15th of the tenth Tibetan month of the year

called Chhuluk, of the Tibetan calculation.

Secure in the knowledge that he had given himself

enough time to return to the kind Abbott and work off

the 50 rupees he had been ransomed for and still be able

to go to the hidden cave and throw the logs at the rate of

50 a day into the Tsangpo, KP hiked all the 250 up-and-

down miles back to the monastery.

He worked there with his customary devotion for the



next ten months. Pleased beyond belief with KP, the

Abbott agreed to set him free once and for all.

It was now the tenth Tibetan month of the yearChhuluk.

KP’s memory recalled the hidden routes that led him

straight to the cave. Carrying the logs back to the

Tsangpo, he tossed them in, 50 a day, for ten days.

Confident that his letter, sent ten months ago to

Darjeeling, would have alerted someone at Sadiya to look

out for the logs, KP stayed back in the village and found

work as a tailor. He needed money for the long haul

back to India.

It was a few months before KP, mission accomplished

and burdened now only with the salt he would need to

pay as rent for shelter along the way, headed

downstream — straight into Abor territory.

The Abors, militantly territorial tribes, seldom let anyone

pass through their areas. They were the reason the

British could not come up the Tsangpo from Assam;

they were also the reason sophisticated British troops

that attempted a pass armed with elephant howitzers

were decimated. The Abors were universally feared.

KP, alone and unarmed, was headed straight for them

with one trump card: salt.

Salt was scarce in the hilly regions – it was a product of

the Tibetan plateau, and extremely valuable. The people

of the hills usually bartered a few sacks of rice for a

sack of salt. KP knew he had something the Abors

would want.

Buying hospitality at the rate of one handful of salt per

member in the house he sheltered in, KP pushed through



village after Abor village. One day, the inevitable

happened – he was taken hostage.

Ever the explorer-surveyor, KP kept his eyes and ears

open through this third incarceration. He later recounted

how the tribe wore next to nothing even in fierce winds

and biting cold, and how they ate snakes and tigers and

bears and fought neighboring tribes for territory.

Finally, he had to part with his savings in exchange for

freedom. Now out of salt and out of money but free

again, KP decided that persisting through more Abor

territory would be foolhardy. The only way out was to

take the long way home: to Lhasa first and then to

Sikkim and finally Darjeeling – an arduous trek, but the

only viable option open to him.

November 1884, Darjeeling:

Four years after leaving India with the treacherous

Lama, KP reached home to an avalanche of bad news.

His mother had died in the intervening years.

Worse yet, the Sikkimese Kazi’s wife had gotten delayed

on her way back and KP’s letter had not reached GMN

(Nem Singh) or anyone in the Survey in time.

No one had been stationed at Sadiya to watch out for his

500 logs as they sailed past, and onwards to the Bay of

Bengal.

Crushed, KP nevertheless faithfully dictated the story of

his four years of trials, tribulations, discovery, and data

to another Lama from the Survey. He then went back to

Darjeeling, to eke out a living in a tailor’s shop in

Darjeeling and occasionally to accompany expeditions



into the mountains.

His Tsangpo account was disregarded (he was, after all,

not a trained surveyor), and lay forgotten under layers of

dust for thirty years.

May 1914, Simla, Survey of India office:

Bailey listened in rapt attention as KP recounted the story

of his misadventures along the Tsangpo in graphic,

minute detail. The young British officer had just returned

from those very same places, and could verify KP’s

account.

Having used KP’s notes, especially those on the Abors,

on subsequent expeditions, some well-regarded people in

the Survey concluded that in spite of his illiteracy, here

was a man intelligent and perceptive beyond measure,

with a memory to die for.

Bailey succeeded in persuading the Survey to pay their

now-thrilled tailor-spy 1000 rupees. A few months later

Kintup a.k.a. KP passed away.

The Tsangpo still thunders down a constriction 18,000

ft deep, just as it had all those hundreds of years ago

when KP stood staring up at the spurs in awe. Few have

seen it in that avatar, and almost no one has been able to

chase it all the way. It continues to keep its secrets,

defying all attempts to decode it as it hurtles down from

the roof of the world.

The only man who ever came close to tracing its route

and learning its secrets, and whose Herculean attempt

was foiled by one letter gone astray, is now a footnote in

the river’s history.

river diaries_ brahmaputra — the spy who went in to the cold early 1800s, asia_

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