Talk:Yarlung Tsangpo Canyon
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Western interest in the Tsangpo started at the end of the 19th century when British explorers and geographers started to study the Himalayan area. For a long time it was unclear where the waters of the easterly flowing Tsangpo would end up. As British citizens were not allowed to enter Tibet they recruited Indian “pundits” to do the actual exploration. The Tsangpo Gorge proved to be the most difficult and inaccessible terrain to be explored. The Sikkimese Kintup was the first who on behalf of the British entered the Tsangpo gorge near Gyala. It was suspected that the Tsangpo was probably leading into the Brahmaputra. As the gorge itself proved to be impenetrable, Kintup was sent to perform the ultimate proof of their connection in 1880. He was to travel to Tibet and then release 500 specially marked logs into the river on a prearranged date, and his British boss, Captain Henry Harman, would post men on the Dihang-Brahmaputra to watch for the arrival of the logs. On his trip Kintup was sold into slavery, escaped, went to a pilgrimage to Lhasa, yet despite all these encumbrances he eventually was able to send off the logs at the prearranged time. Four years had passed. His effort was a glorious failure; his note to alert the British got misdirected, his boss had left India, and nobody paid attention. In 1913, Frederick Marshman Bailey launched an expedition into the gorge that finally settled the issue concluding that the Tsangpo was indeed the upper Brahmaputra. Frank Kingdon-Ward started an expedition in 1924 in the expectation to find a major waterfall as to explain the huge difference in altitude between the Tsangpo and the Brahmaputra. It turned out that the gorge has a series of relatively deep declines and among them was a larger waterfall that he named the “Rainbow Falls;” however, no waterfall of the size of Niagara Falls was found. The area was closed for exploration in later years, until well after the Sino-Indian War. The Chinese government resumed issuing permits in the 1990’s. The legendary "Hidden Falls" of the Tsangpo Gorge were confirmed by the Baker expedition in 1998/9 and described in his book (below).
Sincerely, Mattisse 18:35, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Deepest Gorge?
In a BBC documentary on Tibet, I seem to remember them stating that this was, at 3 times the depth of the Grand Canyon, the deepest gorge in the world. If this is true, it should really be mentioned in the article. --Storkk (talk) 13:35, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
