Santanu Dutta’s Reviews > Frank Kingdon Ward's Riddle of the Tsangpo Gorges: Retracing the Epic Journey of 1924-25 in South-East Tibet > Status Update

Feeling sad. Every good thing has an end. Coming to the end of this book. Explorations are over. Past the Tibetan Platue, Riddle of the Tsangpo. Gorges over.

Reading the chapter "The Falls of Brahmaputra."
Past the rainbow falls the authors lost the sight of the river. When it reappears some 20 miles down, they got amazed to see the river dropped more than 2241 ft in altitude. Is there a falls hidden in the remote unseen 20 miles, or the story of "The Brahmaputra Falls" is a legend, a myth of Tibetan Buddhist Texts.

Reading the Chapter "The Gorge of Tsangpo"
Past Pemako, covering the vivid beautiful colors of autumn, the authors' are back in the track again. The river enters the gorge between the sentinel peaks of Namcha Barwa and the Sacred Mountain Gyala Peri.

"....Pemako is the Promised Land of the Tibetan prophecy. This prophecy was to the effect that, when their religion was persecuted in Tibet, the people should go to Pemako, a land flowing with milk and honey, where the crops grew of their own accord. Most races have their promised land, and such legendary places must necessarily be somewhat inaccessible, hidden -
behind misty barriers where ordinary men do not go."

Author's introduction of Pemako is really marvelous. Here he writes, "Pemako is one of the Tibetan provinces whichPemako is an unknown and remote region. Not only is it extraordinarily difficult to reach from any direction ; it is still more difficult to penetrate and explore when reached...."