- WASHINGTON - Explorers finally have found Shangri-La. It might not be quite
the storied, verdant, Utopia Himalayan paradise of James Hilton's 1933
novel "Lost Horizon" and subsequent movie of the same name. But
it is verdant, it is a kind of paradise, and it is hidden deep within Tibet's
Himalayas in a monstrously steep gorge within a gorge. There is no record
of any person having visited, or even seen, the area before.
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- Tucked beneath a mountain spur at a sharp
bend of the Tsangpo River Gorge, where the cliff sides are only 75 yards
apart and cast perpetual shadows, the place failed to show up even on satellite
surveillance photographs of the area.
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- "If there is a Shangri-La , this
is it," said Rebecca Martin, director of the National Geographic Society's
Expeditions Board, which sponsored the trek. "This is a pretty startling
discovery, especially in a time when many people are saying, "What's
left to discover?"
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- Tentatively named by the explorers the
Hidden Falls of the Tsangpo and located in a forbidding region called Pemako
that Tibetans consider highly sacred, the elusive site was reached by American
explorers Ian Baker, Ken Storm Jr. and Brian Harvey late last year, though
the society did not make its confirmation of their success official until
Thursday.
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- In addition to a spectacular 100-foot-high
waterfall- long rumored but until now undocumented- they found a subtropical
garden between a 23,000 foot and a 26,000 foot mountain, at the bottom
of a 4,000 foot high cliff.
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- According to Martin, it's the world'
deepest mountain gorge.
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- "It's a place teeming with life."
Storm said in telephone interview from his office in the Minneapolis suburb
of Burnsville. "It's a terribly wild river, with many small waterfalls,
heavy rapids and a tremendous current surging through. Yet there are all
kinds of flora; subtropical pine, rhododendrons, craggy fir and hemlock
and spruce on the hillsides. It's lush. Just a tremendous wild garden landscape."
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- The animals there include a rare, horned
creature called the Takin, sacred to Tibetan Buddhists.
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- Difficult as the gorge was to reach,
Storm said one of the hardest aspects of the expedition was leaving to
return to civilization.
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- "The last we saw of it was looking
down... with clouds sealing the gorge and side-stream waterfalls jetting
out into the river," he said. "it's probably the most romantic
landscape I'd ever seen."
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- This was the seventh expedition that
Baker, a Tibet scholar living in Katmandu, led into the Himalayas in search
of the mythic falls.
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- In addition to Storm, a book and game
dealer turned explorer, and Harvey, a National Geographic photographer,
the team included another scholar, Hamid Sardar of Cambridge, Mass., two
Tibetan hunters, a Sherpa guide and eight porters - though Baker, Storm
and Harvey were the only ones to make the demanding descent to the gorge
and falls.
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- Among other things, their discovery proves
that two great rivers of Asia - the Tsangpo, which runs completely across
Tibet, and the mighty Brahmaputra, which runs through the Indian state
of Assam and Bangladesh to the Bay of Bengal--are connected.
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- Reminiscent of the fabled "source
of the Nile" that English explorers Richard Burton and John Spede
raced each other to find in the middle of the 19th century--both making
controversial claims to have found it first--the Tsangpo falls and gorge
proved so far beyond explorers' reach that they were declared nonexistant.
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- The southern approach up the Brahmaputra
posed the most obstacles.
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- "It's tremendously difficult terrain
of jungles and insects and tigers," Storm said. "The lower gorge
area was protected by Abhors and Mishmi, Burmese tribal groups. They protected
that area pretty fiercely, and early British attempts to penetrate were
frustrated."
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- In 1911, two British explorers were able
to locate all but 30 to 40 miles of the river connection. A local guide
named Kintup was later hired to continue into the inner gorge and try to
find the sacred place by traveling as a Buddhist pilgrim.
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- He claimed to have found a connection
between the two rivers but said the only high waterfall was not on the
Tsangpo but up a smaller tributary.
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- In 1924, British botanist Francis Kingdon-Ward
advanced to a point that narrowed the unknown stretch of the river to three
or four miles. He found a waterfall as well but measured it at only 30
feet. Finding further penetration impossible because of the steepness and
narrowness of the gorge and bad weather, he turned back, declaring the
long sought high falls nonexistent.
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- Although the Tsangpo River starts at
7,000 feet above sea level, it rapidly descends and cuts through the Tibet
plateau by way of the only gap in the Himalayas open to the heavy weather
of the Indian plains and wetlands below.
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- "The weather pours up from Assam,
which is one of the wettest places on Earth, and you have notoriously terrible
weather in there." Storm said. "You can go weeks if not months
with clouds and rains and snow at the higher elevation. You have a river
literally eating its way through these mountains in this great gorge."
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- Lasting 17 days, Baker's expedition approached
the Tsangpo from the north, following animal trails and the advice of their
Tibetan hunters and descending some 4,000 feet. Using mountaineers' ropes
to get down the last 80 feet of the cliff, they found themselves at the
"great falls," which they measured with laser range finders -
a Shangri-La just a quarter of a mile from where Kingdon-Ward turned back.
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- "It's a powerful sight to experience,"
said Storm, who said he plans to return. "it's a rather humbling feeling
just to have taken part."
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