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The Mighty Brahmaputra
One
of the great rivers of Asia, the Brahmaputra commences its 3,000-km
journey to the Bay of Bengal from the slopes of Kailash in western Tibet,
a mountain venerated by Hindus and Buddhists alike as the incarnation of
'Meru', the core of the universe.
As Tibet's great river, the Tsangpo, transverses east across the
high-altitude Tibetan plateau north of the Great Himalayan Range, carving
out myriad channels and sandbanks on its way. As it tumbles from the
Himalayan heights towards the plains of the subcontinent it twists back on
itself, cutting a deep and still unnavigated gorge, until finally turning
south it emerges in
Arunachal
Pradesh as the Dihong. Just beyond Pasighat, it meets the Dibang and
Lohit where it finally becomes the Brahmaputra.
Now an enormous wash of silt-laden water so wide in places that one
cannot see the far bank, it passes through the heart of Assam,
creating an ever-fluctuating pattern of sandbanks and islands on its way,
skirting the hills of
Meghalaya to
enter Bangladesh, and finally heads due south, spreading across the flood
plain as land merges with sea at the Bay of Bengal.
The river is both a blessing and a curse to the people of
Assam. Every year during the monsoon it bursts out
of its wide, shallow channel into the flood plain, wreaking destruction
and havoc, then leaving wonderfully fertile land in its wake. Decades of
uncontrolled logging in Tibet by the Chinese have caused irreparable
environmental damage: topsoil and water cascades down the denuded slopes
into the Brahmaputra. Flood historians have noticed an alarming trend
since records began in the 15th century.