Highlands, High Spirits, High Adventure: A Historical Overture

Highlands, High Spirits, High Adventure

A hiSToriCAl overTUre

Col. Ashok Pratap Tanwar

Senior Associate Six Sigma Healthcare, Delhi

The spirit of adventure-reawakened from the late fifteenth century-spurred exploration, to find ‘new lands’, resources and wealth that led to conquests and colonisation, and establishing of empires by european countries. This, linked with the renaissance and the industrial revolution, enabled the western nations to amass reservoirs of wealth, pools of talent and, to be a fountainhead of enterprise, knowledge and institutions of learning; a summation of all aspirations and endeavour, achievements and destiny of mankind. Also a factor in the drift, rise and, the fall of nations. Indians were aware of these since the Vedic age, many millennia earlier and had moved in their quest to ascertain the origin of holy rivers and lakes of the continent, with a longing to be one with the maker. The geography and terrain of India are such that a few countries in the world can match in variety, extent and scope of adventure. This subcontinent, a largest country peninsula, an abode of high mountains, a host of perenial rivers and lakes, with vast stretches of deserts, and evergreen forests of the north-east; and its coastal lands, with a few archipelago too, has beckoned the adventurist to its soil, since time immemorial. Accordingly the vast expanse of this land is traversed to the hilt by the adventurers. The description of adventure is not complete without highlighting the toils and triumphs of the countrymen during earlier centuries. Under the colonial yoke they were significantly active. And the pioneer explorers of an earlier era, studying the facets of eastern culture returned to their hearth in europe, to narrate amazing matters; one being the use of ‘rock that burnt’ to cook food. In search of India from the west, columbus had discovered the continent of America spurring later generations to explore for over four centuries more.

At about the same time medieval science and technology too were proliferating. New trade routes on land and maritime were explored and channeled on, to reach new destinations, vast distance away. Artists and thinkers had conjured designs of machines to give flight to man. The pursuit of adventure would be better understood by the interaction of the adventurer with the elements, prominently the aero, aqua, and the terra (pyros and cosmos excluded).

Aero, The enlivening elemenT

man’s urge to fly is as old as civilisation permits us to recollect. The oldest existing and accepted flying apparatus is the ornithopter, designed by Leonardoda-Vinci in the late 15th century, as in a drawing at right. even the greatest of former explorers could only visit a few of the world famous locations of learning and religion, or of art and architecture. Up to the end eighteenth century, numerous contraptions were configured; illustrations of aerial cars existed in Venice depicting the thought process of flight of man. Finally, the Wright brothers broke this bondage of man with earth in

their historic flight of December, 1903. In 1919, the Trans continental micro light team flying from Australia to england, brought the fliers to India. This motivated enthusiasts then to found an aero institute here. Hence the Aero club the first flying institute was established in 1927, even before the raising of the Indian Air Force in 1932.

AqUA, The endeAring elemenT

man has been wanderer since the time this restless species originated on earth. He followed the migration of animals that took him to new lands, fled from hostile tribes, and encroaching glaciers. However when land finished and vast expanses of rivers and oceans confronted the man, no animal trail was to be followed. Then began man’s interaction with water to reach

The most famous, Alexander the Great engaged the Indian King, Paurav (Porus), on the banks of the Jhelum, in 325 bc. All along, trade of goods, and exchange of culture continued on the Spice route i.e. the maritime Silk route; also the Indian Ocean maritime System. In 1498, Ahmed bin majid, the Gujarati navigator piloted the caravel of Vasco-da-Gama from malindi on the coast of Africa through the Ocean to calicut, opening India to the west.

In modern times mihir Sen had excelled in 1950s by swimming across the Gibraltar Sea and Palk Strait, the english channel and Panama canal, when the nation was nascent and achievements at inter- national level were but a few. These were enhanced later by the feats of ms bula choudhary in 1980s. Truly this is an endearing element

distant destinations. The archaeological survey and revolutionised DNA research is concluding that the first europeans sailed westwards in the Atlantic Ocean some 17,000 years ago to reach the American continent. Here they met with tribes that had travelled overseas and land from Asia 3000 years earlier, long before the last ice age. The adventurers were ahead, even prehistorically.

History’s first recorded voyage into unknown seas was a four years expedition from egypt to the mysterious land of Puntus in 2,500 bc to obtain incense and myrrh, gold, ebony and pygmies. India’s ancient civilisation had an ongoing trade with this land called Vaivasvatapuri. How extensive this overseas trade in the proto-historic period was, can be gauged from the fact that ivory rods produced at Lothal, Gujarat, reached as far as rasShamara on the north Syrian coast at the close of the third millennium bc.

Then from the early second millennium bc, the myceneans, Dorians, and the Ionians became maritime powers with colonies stretching across the mediterranean, encompassing the Greeks’ epic war at Hellespont with Troy, narrated by Homer in the Iliad over 400 years later; confirmed by excavation of ruins in the 1870s. TerrA, The enriChing elemenT

And finally terra, the land; the mother earth, on which has thrived all life. The search and exploration of all of the continents; the marking and mapping of different lands and people was completed only a century ago. Land, rather the highlands, predominantly the Himalaya and other mountain ranges truly bring out the best

in performance; both of individuals and in team work. The challenges beget companionship; the fear encourages closeness; and the dangers bind the adventurers even closer. This element also facilitates the merger of activities; those conducted in other media - gravitational force being omnipresent. All of these are spread over the length of the book.

inTegrATing of AdvenTUre wiTh The elemenTS

Initially the Aero club began aero adventure with gliding over the Safdarjung Airfield by gliders in 1930s. The frame of aircraft then was wooden. This was improved and made of aluminum alloy by mid last century. Thereafter carbon fibre had been effective in streamlining its body. The quest for greater heights had stirred imagination to facilitate the same.

In aqua adventure at present windsurfing, white water rafting, kayaking, sailing, scuba diving, and many such pre-dominate the scene. A new blue water sailing node had been established at marve by 2006. The Adventure Wing, the apex body conducting adventure has nine training nodes of aqua adventure along swift rivers, and golden beaches. many ranks have represented the country in international meets and regattas, in rafting and sailing, in mountain terrain biking and sport climbing.

The eArly SUrveyS, mAPPing And TrAde

The early survey and mapping of the region had begun in 1770s. This had commenced with the earliest map of bengal. In 1774 and again in 1779, the Governor-General Warren Hastings despatched the state secretary and explorer George bogle to Shigatse. Up in the north, the lands of the meeting of vast kingdoms and empires of russia and china were to be confirmed. Here since 1773, Purangir Gosain, a

local, was employed as organiser and interpreter in the court of Warren Hastings. He went as far as accompanying the Tashi Lama of Shigatse on his march to Peking (now beijing), in 1774, and returned via mansarovar to deliver results in his capacity in all matters.

In 1783 Warren Hastings sent his own assistant/ aide, captain Samuel Turner, as emissary to the fourth Panchen Lama, to question the natives about the countries lying to the north between Lhasa and Siberia. While Purangir had moved and affected his mission, bogle and Turner reached nowhere near Lhasa. Hastings then decided to try what could not be done by european channels. Purangir, recently commended to the Lama establishment was to represent the company in October 1784, and thus led an adventure of Indian travellers. At the time this was the only non-european trading caravan that proceeded to Tibet through bhutan and returned after good trade in gold dust and silver, wool and musk. He was the first known Indian adventurer tasked and accomplished beyond Indian frontiers.

The ideA of remoTe inTeriorS

The surveyors were curious to ascertain the origins of great rivers such as the Ganges, brahmaputra, and Indus, which travellers’ tales had hitherto described as lakes in the high mountains bringing their tribute to the plains, and their course of

flow depicted in a north-south direction. colonel robert colebrooke, the Surveyor General of bengal in 1794 was anxious to despatch teams to the sources, and the first one set out in 1807. but the funds available were meagre and they could only make short excursions up the Ganges and Yamuna. The rivers there, lands and lakes above, holy as heavens, beckoned the Indians.

These included reconnoitre and confirmation of rivers and lakes such as the Ganges, the Yamuna, the mansarovar; the rediscovery of the Ajanta and the ellora caves, the Nainital and Darjeeling, Dalhousie and the Amarnath cave even. With so much geographical knowledge gained, the vision was widened to cover the vast unsurveyed lands between Yarkand, Turkistan and Ladakh. Here most prominent were Nain Singh, Kishen Singh and Kinthup.

exPlorATion by indiAnS

The locals also brought the british closest to Lhasa, the most intriguing destination of the nineteenth century; the quest to get to which was on, since the ships first sailed in on to the shores of the largest peninsula. Known as ‘chain men’ and ‘pundits’, the first ones, mohamed-i-Hamid, mirzaShuja (the mirza), and Hyder Shah (the Havildar) operated in Afghanistan and, central Asia. In 1865, pundit munphool moved around badakshan and collected information on russian

political and military matters of the entire region. Later Hari ram surveyed 14,800 sq km of Tibet. The contributions of Nain Singh rawatKishen Singh and, Kinthup were immense.

Nain went to Lhasa and traversed the country between mongolia in the north-west to Assam in the east; travelling through Tawang in the east, to Ladakh in the west, central and high Asia up to the Oxus river beyond the russian Frontier in the 'Golden Age' of exploration; from 1865 to 1885. For two years he was coached in this craft, trained to have retentive memory, operate various survey instruments, develop the ability to walk at high altitudes and observe with a geographer’s eye. These early adventurers and explorers ventured into the unknown with little more than beads on a string to tell their paces. but their surveys were astonishingly very accurate.

The career of Kishen Singh continued. After exploring the Pamir region from 1873, he returned to Takla makan. Thereafter in 1878 he left the frozen frontiers for a four year trek encompassing Lhasa and the western china. He was arrested twice, in china and in Tibet as only miscreants travelled at that time of the year, as per Tibetan authority. The caravan with which he travelled was robbed, and more than once he barely survived, but returned to India having travelled 4,765 km on foot with details about lands outside of chinese national borders and the Outer mongolia that had never before been chartered. His records of foot measures over long distances later proved to be extremely accurate.

Kinthup’s toil of dropping marked logs of wood, though belatedly in YarlungTsangpo river in Tibet to be recognised in Dibrugarh, Assam, saw the light of the day thirty years later, in subsequent century, when other information poured in and fitted as pieces of jigsaw puzzle to confirm this only illiterate explorer’s efforts from

1881 to 1884, and narration from memory, that the brahmaputra was none other than that river of Tibetan origin.

His odyssey of getting sold in slavery, later imprisonment and, escape from hostile tribes to confirm the river’s origin and course of flow was recognised only by the next generation of surveyors and was honoured shortly before his demise in 1914.

The survey and confirmation of the wildest and the least explored region of the Tsangpo conducted by him where the river surges through the world’s deepest gorges, plunging more than 3000 m thrice deeper than colorado’s Grand canyon is at present limited to the faded files of the Survey of India, no longer relevant in satellite era. It remains a saga of agony and passion, of travails and triumphs.

The odysseys of others as Hari ram, Kalyan Singh, Sarat chand Das and Hyder Shah (the Havildar) among many, continued for long. mirzaShuja (the mirza), had provided most valuable information of the central Asian plains, steppes and mountains all the way from the Oxus river, over the Pamirs, through the Kashgar and Yarkand, onto the Karakoram Pass and into India, in his sojourn of 1867-1868. muhammad (the mullah) later traced the course of the Indus and its tributaries. Yarkand’s location was confirmed by mohamed-i-Hameed earlier, but sadly he didn’t return to see Leh and the results of his survey. Tragically the mirza and his son-in-law were murdered by their own guides while asleep on the second trip, in 1872. Intrigue and suspicion, betrayal and deception worked well even then.

reCogniTionS And AwArdS

To surmise, the lives of Nain Singh and the adventurers paraphrased the entire struggle for power in the plains of India and through the crucial and strategic plateaus, rivers and valleys of Tibet, Himalaya and the Hindu Kush. In 1877 Nain received the royal Geographic Society’s gold medal, the first Indian ever and the only one before twenty first century for his great journeys, surveys of Tibetan gold-fields, and mapping of lakes and rivers. For a meagre pay of rs 20/- per month they risked life; ascertaining the flow of Tsangpo river and confirmed its course from changthang to Siang, merging with brahamaputra.

They confirmed the position of Lhasa by mapping the entire region. The government’s reward was land and revenue for it all. In the summer of 1891, yet another pundit, Atma ram counted steps on beads, this time guiding Lieutenant Hamilton bower and medical officer captain WG Thorold from Kashmir, Ladakh en-route to Lhasa. Three days short of the destination, they were turned back, with Atma ram having brought two british officers closest to the periphery of the most intriguing city then.

SUbSeqUenT geogrAPhiC ConfirmATionS

As the sun set on the nineteenth century, these adventurers and explorers had confirmed the northern and north-western, eastern and the north-eastern limits of the frontiers. It was known by then that, the Sutlej in emanating from Tibet, pierced the border range of mountains within seven kilometres of Leo Pargial, the highest peak of this region; the Indus when turning through the great Himalayan region passed within 22 km of Nanga Parbat, the highest point of the Punjab Himalaya, the Hunza river cut through the Kailash range within fifteen kilo- metres of rakaposhi the supreme point of the range. In 1903 the Tsangpo from Tibet was finally determined to have curled round the base of point of highest altitude, Namcha barwa, to cut through the Assam Himalaya and flow as the brahmaputra in India.

Other expeditions led by british officers were composed mainly of Indian surveyors. Lieutenant Lewis’ expedition into the miri areas of the Subansiri Valley included surveyors like Yamuna Prasad and mohammad Nabi besides the khalasis, the local porters and camp followers.

The qUeST ConTinUeS

The surveyors in expeditions were hard pressed for time in most difficult terrains. In 1913, captain HT morshead had established that Subansiri river, now Lohit, did cut through the high range and had its origin further north in a stream, charchu, which Nain Singh had discovered more than thirty years earlier. Narayan Singh and Zahur Ali, in the late 1920s and 1930s, toiled deep in the unsafe Naga Hills of burma; where political and government writ was not law, and headhunting was a common indulgence of Nagas. Their exploits however are still very less known and hence less appreciated. On the merit of extant, they deserve to be counted among the greatest and bracketed with the most daring of explorers of history such as Grant and Livingston.

After all, the location by latitude, longitude and altitude of Lhasa was first confirmed by Nain Singh; the brahmaputra to be the Tsangpo river in Tibet by Kinthup; the tallest mountain by radhanath Sikdar, and the Dudhkoshi Nala Valley leading to the Solo Khumbu to finally attain everest; by the Surveyor, Natha Singh. And the map makers relied on the cartography created by the pundits since mid-nineteenth century.

Kishen Singh’s demise in February 1921, marked the close of a romantic chapter of not only survey by Indians but of Asiatic exploration. A century after his toil and over a generation before the present, his grandson, late Harish chand rawat was to scale everest on 29 may 1965, from the south-east ridge. This spark of adventure, on since the late eighteenth century is alive today, over two hundred years later, stoking the same flames, and leading the present generation of adventurists to scale the ‘eight thousanders’ (the 8000 m peaks) annually, trek the geographical poles, dive the deep seas and explore space - the cosmos.

The SPiriT of AdvenTUre doeS noT diminiSh wiTh Time.

All of the above has been narrated to bring out the spirit of adventure of these personnel of the Indian Army since the late eighteenth century. They were the ancestors of the present day adventurers; of the same Survey of India whose reps today map the Arctic and the Antarctic. A few important matters merit the attention of the reader. recently Dr Shekhar Pathak and Dr Uma bhatt had brought out a biography of Nain Singh together with three of his diaries and the royal Geographic Society articles about his travels, in three volumes titled 'Asia ki Peeth Par', published by Pahir Naini Tal. This had been a belated but befitting tribute to Nain Singh rawat, the unsung hero.

It was also learnt during research that in mid-2004, an Indian postage stamp featuring Nain Singh was issued to commemorate his role in the Great Trigonometric Survey. Due to the clandestine nature of their work and because they were 'Spy explorers' their works never gained the recognition due for such important feats. Also as these 'Spy explorers' worked for the british, postindependence their works were not given due recognition. The clandestine nature of their work made such important discoveries look unpatriotic. This is the only reason their accomplishments faded from public memory. but in the ‘Survey’ at Dehra Dun, and at the Indian mountaineering Foundation (ImF), where exploratory works are still recognised in awards made after their names, they are still revered. even today, after sixty years of modernisation, Tibet, that mysterious land can still be profitably viewed through the eyes of those early explorers. Their explorations are still the window to Tibet and central Asia and high Himalaya, and remain a source of inspiration for those possessed with such zeal. sshc