The Himalayas are home to many legends. One such legend is the story of Kinthup, an illiterate tailor from Darjeeling.
In 1880, the British sent him on an almost impossible task.The officials asked him to survey Tsangpo, the mysterious river in Tibet.
While doing so, Kinthup was also expected to determine whether Tsangpo was the same as the Brahmaputra, the river that flows through India’s North-East.
A servant, a slave
Disguised as a servant to a Chinese lama, he entered Tibet through the Donkia Pass. While Kinthup possessed extraordinary memory and basic survey skills, the lama turned abusive and eventually betrayed him.
In a dramatic turn of events, the Chinese lama sold him into slavery for 50 rupees. Kinthup, who was stripped of his freedom, endured months of forced labour.
During these months of slavery, he sewed clothes and tended animals. However, he never lost hope.His determination to follow the Tsangpo River remained intact.
The end of captivity
Finally, after months, Kinthup escaped captivity and resumed his journey to survey the Tsangpo.
To do so, he traversed forests, cliffs and rapids, and continued to track the river with his compass and prayer beads. He committed each bend of the river to memory.
He eventually reached Pemako, a sacred valley, and lived for months at Marpung Monastery, where he worked for monks and studied the river from above.
The story of wooden logs
Later, in Lhasa, he persuaded a Sikkimese official to write to Darjeeling, explaining his plan to drop five hundred marked wooden logs into the Tsangpo.If any surfaced in Assam, it would prove the rivers were one.
Carrying this plan out was arduous. Battling swollen monsoon waters, Kinthup tied metal tags to each log and released them over ten days in the roaring gorge between Namche Barwa and Gyala Peri.
An unmatched journey
Though his mission went unrecognised in his lifetime, his daring trek remains one of the most remarkable episodes in Himalayan exploration.
An illiterate tailor who, despite betrayal and slavery, achieved what no European explorer of his era could.
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