Whitewater

Over the years, I’d heard the stories on the adventure sports circuit: legends of a bold rafting attempt that ran over 1,300km from Gelling near the Tibet border to Dhubri, the last Indian village before Bangladesh. The upper section of the river is a stretch that had never been navigated before, and hasn’t been navigated since. 

That was thirty Januaries ago. Last year, I began to track down members of the expedition. I took a road trip from Mumbai to Mussoorie through lockdown and relied on the interpretation skills of a new friend in Japan. I encountered exasperating dead-ends and patchy phone connections. But the thrill of the chase kept me going. It was a small taste of a very large adventure. Here is the story.

Chamoli first went rafting during a Saser Kangri III expedition in 1986 when the party had to cross the turbulent Shyok River in Ladakh. For the Brahmaputra expedition, Chamoli called on a few old teammates who had little experience of running rivers, but relished a challenge. The deal was that the Japanese would bring the equipment, and the Indians would handle logistics.

The Japanese had started looking for funds to buy equipment. They approached Fuji TV, a television station in Tokyo, to shoot a film for primetime viewing, one that would capture the culture and natural beauty of the region in addition to the rafting. Coming along to host the documentary was the celebrity Japanese zoologist, Masanori Hata, who decided to take the land route along the river.

On 20 December 1990, the Japanese flew to Delhi. Their cargo included, but was not limited to, a brand new 16-foot oar-paddle combination Avon raft imported from the UK; a second raft made in Japan; a rubber dinghy; two sets of outboard engines; wet suits; oars and paddles. The rafts were ‘self-bailing,’ meaning that they drained automatically. Bucket boats simply would not cut it on the giant rapids of the Brahmaputra.

By Christmas day, the team was in Rishikesh for a short training camp. Over the next few days, they were taken through the basics by Motup and Akshay: reading the river; assessing currents; understanding rescue protocols. “Our main aim was to get rid of their fear,” Motup remembered. “We got them to jump before some of the biggest rapids.”

The camp was also a selection trial for the ITBP men. Bihari Lal and Tajber Singh were well-known for their strength on skiing and mountaineering expeditions. Attar Singh was also an experienced mountaineer. He had grown up swimming in the Bhagirathi river. Shasidharan Pillai and Bharu Mohamad from Kerala were likewise strong swimmers. Others, on standby, would join the party providing land support to the river runners.

Once the camp wrapped up, Motup hopped on his Yamaha RX100 at midnight, eager to ride to Delhi for final preparations, but the bike flew off a speed breaker in the thick fog at dawn, and Motup broke his shoulder.

It was down to Akshay to salvage the situation. Back in Delhi, he got in touch with a 23-year-old named Ajay Maira he’d met on the Ganga. Together, these Delhi boys had run smaller rivers like the Teesta and the Beas. The following day, a coiffed and besuited Maira rode to the ITBP headquarters on Lodhi Road to meet Chamoli, and was signed up as Motup’s replacement.

“Any new river is a draw,” Maira recollected. “You want to test the waters like a skier wants to run a new slope. Almost 90% of the game is about reading the currents and deciding where you want to be; the paddling and man management makes up the other 10%.” It was just that when it came to the Brahmaputra, there were hardly any points of reference. There was no one to call to figure out logistics. The young river guides were on their own.

After Pei, one of the last settlements along the Tsangpo in Tibet, the water drops from an altitude of around 3,000 metres. The mountaineer Harish Kapadia, former editor of The Himalayan Journal, noted that the river enters Indian territory at around 580 metres above sea level. Pasighat, about 260km into India from this point, is located at just 150 metres. Chunks of the river rage relentlessly over a series of drops for most of the year: the Brahmaputra has the fifth highest mean discharge in the world at 19,300 cubic metre per second. Rapids are more navigable when the river is at its lowest. That is why winter, despite the freezing waters, is the ideal season to mount an expedition.

The American Whitewater Association classifies rapids from 1 (Easy) to 6 (Extreme and Exploratory Rapids). Maira told me that the Brahmaputra is a Class 5 river, which means it offers “extremely long, obstructed, or very violent rapids which expose a paddler to added risk.” In Class 5 stretches, swimming is dangerous and rescue is complicated even for experts. (For comparison, the Ganga is a Class 3—Intermediate level.) The Brahmaputra’s altitude drops send the water hurtling downstream in a series of rapids and cascades. For a river runner, this is paradise.

“We asked the pilot to fly as low as possible to have the opportunity to scout,” Maira said. “There’s only that much you can observe over a distance of 250-odd kilometres, yet we were looking out for landmarks that could help us identify rapids when on the river.”

In Gelling, around 4km from the India-China border, the team was greeted by the first of many reception parties. That afternoon, a few of the members hiked down 6km to Bona, and looked at what Maira called “a mother of a rapid,” right where they were supposed to begin. Winter in the east meant that the light was already fading by the time they got back to Gelling at 4pm. In the evening, they were treated to a dance performance by local monks in the morung. ^[6] That night, the team lay under a canopy of stars, restless for the dawn light of the big day.

The first raft set off amidst cries of ‘Brahmaputra ki jai,’ with Buddhist lamas chanting prayers on the banks. Almost immediately, it was tossed about by the churning water as the waves came crashing down: the raft went near vertical at one point. The rafters leaned over to the front to counter the lift, paddling furiously down the river. There was excitement in the air when the two teams reunited after negotiating the first rapid. It was a relatively short day with just 5km of rafting, but that evening the apong ^[7] tasted sweeter than ever.

Later that day, they came face to face with their biggest challenge yet: the river dropped 30 feet over a 100-metre stretch. This was a Grade 6 rapid. With a heavy heart, they decided to portage this section. Portaging meant dismantling the raft, carrying the heavy load over the slippery rocks of the bank, and putting it all together again before taking to the water: “a lot of sweat,” as Maira said, “and absolutely no fun.” It wasn’t even the only time they’d have to do it: up ahead before Tuting, the river roared down a vertiginous drop that looked exceedingly dangerous.

Just before Tuting, villagers crowded the banks and the suspension bridge above them. On land, curious locals touched the paddlers’ dry suits with wonder. Though Tuting had an airstrip that was built during the 1962 war, there was no road connectivity at the time. “If you saw a tractor and a trailer in town, it had been choppered in,” Maira said. “If it needed major repairs, it had to be choppered out.”

That evening, the Japanese film crew started pouring into Tuting. They were escorted by a dao-wielding ^[8] local, who had been guiding them on the long trek through dense undergrowth.

The film crew had had its own set of adventures on land. “We weren’t that interested in the rafting,” Jeremy Angel, a still photographer who travelled with the crew, told me. “But it was the only way we could get to this territory where no film crew had been for decades. We even crossed into Bhutan on one occasion, quite unknowingly.”

That night, the crew enjoyed a grand reception hosted by the locals. The team joined the residents of Tuting village in dancing the ponung ^[9] around a bonfire. The celebrations ran late into the night.

The river guides concluded that it was a Class 5 rapid: dangerous but worth a shot. This daring attempt had to be recorded for posterity, so Attar suggested Chamoli park himself on the bank to take photographs. Akshay went first and Maira saw his raft disappear behind a big wave for what seemed like ages. “I waited and waited but he just wouldn’t be seen again, that’s how big the wave was. When I finally saw him rise on the crest, he was also the only one on the raft.”

Uehara remembered paddling hard, unable to think of anything else. The waves increased in size as they advanced, until he saw a massive wall of water in front of him. “Our guide shouted ‘Over front!’ which is when I moved to the front of the boat. Then I heard ‘Over right!’ and I moved to the right. After the third or the fourth wave, he yelled ‘Drop!’ which is when the team lay flat on the bottom, trying to hold on.”

The raft hit the wave at an angle and swung to the left. The next moment, they had fallen into the freezing river and were being battered by the waves. Through it all, Uehara tried to keep his head above the water. By the time he reached a calmer stretch, Tajber was around to pull him out.

The waves pummelled Maira’s raft too: five men were tossed into the choppy waters. Most managed to recover until Chamoli, from the bank, realised that someone was missing. He spotted a red helmet bobbing about in a whirlpool. It was Nakatani, frantically trying to grab onto some slippery rocks. He was having trouble moving after injuring his leg during the fall. To Chamoli, it looked like he had given up.

“I was spun around vertically multiple times and thrown against a rock. At one point, I lost consciousness after drinking a lot of water,” Nakatani told me.

Attar ran down the bank and hurled a throw bag at Nakatani. It took him a few attempts to grab the line, until he was finally drawn in, exhausted and speechless. For the next hour, the team kept pumping water out of him. “That incident made me realise that death was not a distant thing,” Nakatani said, “that it was right next to me.”

On the opposite bank, Chamoli sat holding his head in his hands. He felt guilty for having hopped off the raft despite being the leader. He realised that they had been lucky to escape with just the loss of equipment. That evening, honouring protocol, Chamoli sent out a message to Dibrugarh through the wireless operator. It was relayed to headquarters in Delhi via Guwahati: “Big rapid, 10 paddlers rescued.”

When Maira called home a couple of days later, his father heaved a sigh of relief. He had read the terse newspaper report about the 10 rescued men. No men were missing after all—two simply didn’t fall off the rafts, and a third had been taking photographs on the bank.

After a day’s rest, they set off again, this time in the company of honking vehicles on the road that ran above them. The land party now travelled by government trucks. Though they ran rapids every now and then, it was evident that the river was gradually calming down. The team finally sailed into Pasighat under pouring rain and flashes of lightning. It had taken two tense weeks to get there.

“You have markers on the river to indicate shallow waters. With the motors, we were simply logging distances, yet you had to see where you were going,” Maira said.

On this stretch, the river was busy with signs of life: steamers ferried commuters and cars; fleets of trawlers sailed across purposefully. The sun set behind giant Chinese fishing nets. Playful river dolphins showed up on occasion. Yashima, who always carried fishing gear, could now try his luck at procuring fresh catch, though he always returned empty-handed. “Akshay and I went to the market to get Yashima-san fresh fish at Dhubri,” Maira laughed.

Soon, the last of the snow-capped peaks faded into the distance. The landscape came to be dominated by low-lying green hills and elephant grass marshes. Sand and reed islands dotted the course. Despite the idyll on the river, reminders of the violence that the region was dealing with were never far away. As they unfurled the tricolour on 26 January, the ground party received news of an ULFA ambush just 5km from their location. At Tezpur, the team was asked to move their tents because of the threat of a guerrilla attack. In Guwahati, they saw a double-decker bridge that was heavily guarded by armed men.

The river became increasingly human from here on. Yagihara recalled seeing giant patches of foam as they made their way further downstream to Guwahati. After meeting dignitaries and journalists in the capital, the team set off towards its final destination. At Dhubri, in the fading light of the last day of January 1991 and amidst cries of ‘Brahmaputra ki jai,’ the crew hopped off the river one final time.

The months leading up to the thirtieth anniversary of the expedition were tragic for Indian adventure tourism’s first family. Akshay Kumar died due to an unexpected cardiac arrest last September. Then Bull Kumar, aged 87, died on the last day of 2020, just weeks after he regaled me with stories about his son and their mutual passions. The Brahmaputra expedition is an indelible part of their legacy. Its planning and execution displayed trademark Kumar traits—a thirst for the untried; doggedness in the face of adversity; a tireless curiosity about the country they loved so much.  

For Akshay, the river was literally where it all began. His wife Dilshad Master-Kumar told me what it meant to him: “It tickled him, how as a 20-year-old kid, all he had to say was kudo paani mein, and all those tough ITBP men would jump in the river.”

Shail Desai is a freelance writer based out of Bombay. Besides writing about the outdoors and endurance sports, he likes to chase stories that give him his next excuse to wander the mountains. His other work can be read at shailwrites.com. He tweets @dshail.