CHAPTER LIII

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.

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.

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.