Sutlej

Satluj (also Sutlej or Satlej; Urdu ستلج; Tibetan གླང་ཆེན་གཙང་པོ ZWPY Langqên Zangbo, Wylie glang chen gtsang po; Hindi सतलुज Satluj; Panjabi ਸਤਲੁਜ Satluj; Chinese 象泉河, Pinyin Xiàngquán Hé; English Sutlej) is the longest of the five rivers of Punjab, at about 1450 km.

History

The river rises in Tibet near Mount Kailash. From here it flows through the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab, where it receives the waters of the Beas. For a good 100 km it forms the border between India and Pakistan. In Pakistan, it joins the Chanab; together with the latter, it forms the Panjnad, which eventually flows into the Indus.

Myth and history

The Satluj originally drained into the mythical Sarasvati, which cannot be located with certainty, until tectonic activity reversed the direction of the river around 1700 BC, making it a tributary of the Indus. As a result, the Sarasvati dried up, leading to the desertification of Cholistan.

Along the largely gorge-like upper reaches of the river, the Shang Shung culture existed more than two thousand years ago. The ruins of their capital Khyunglung Ngülkhar, the "Silver Palace in the Garuda Valley", are located above a valley basin of the Satluj in western Tibet. The Austrian Bruno Baumann searched for the Buddhist Shangri-La there and came across the cradle of this Tibetan culture, ruins left behind by the empire of the Shang Shung kings.

To the west, the Sutlej breaks through the main Himalayan ridge near Shipki Pass to flow down through deep gorges in India's Kinnaur district. This is the region of the old Hindustan Tibet Road, a caravan route from India to Tibet built high above the river, now replaced by National Highway 22 built since 1961 rather close to the river.