A white-knuckled adventure

Rarely does one come across a book that is satisfying on so many levels. Written with painstaking scholarliness, this book is also a white-knuckled adventure story told with deep passion, and it pulls off the difficult trick of never allowing these two motives to clash. It also raises some important questions about the history and prehistory of the Indus Valley and associated areas that one hopes will not be ignored or thrust aside because of the popular appeal the book is no doubt destined to have.

Part of the reason why the book unites passion and rigour is the fact that Albinia is a woman keenly aware of the ironies of her journey, through Pakistan, Kashmir, Ladakh and Tibet, always on the trail of the elusive and beleaguered Indus. She has done her homework very thoroughly, but she does not foreground the intensive reading, consultation with scholars and archive-rummaging she has done the story is the story of the journey, pure and simple, and the scholarship provides the &lsquobackstory&rsquo as it were, to the river&rsquos existence and romance.

This narrative focus gives the book a tight structure, and affords no let-up on the storytelling pace. On the way there are some impressive scenes the shrine of Khwaja Khizr in the middle of the river, the lost tombs of Sindh with their brilliant frescoes eroding in the desert winds, the dynamited Buddhas of Bamiyan, the deeply puzzling 5,000-year-old rock carvings of Kashmir, and finally the hallucinatory splendour of Kailash and the source of the Indus. But these are not offered up solely as snapshots along the intrepid explorer&rsquos way Albinia frames each scene with the histories and socio-political complexities that underlie it, ranging from contentious colonial awards to Harappan archaeological conundrums to the ancient customs of Ladakhi matriarchates, and she does this with such skill that one never feels one is being lectured to on these rather abstruse subjects. Indeed, this is how one wishes history could always be written.

Along the way, Albinia is aware of those who went before her the &lsquoAlexanders Macedon, Hamilton and Burnes&rsquo, conquerors, explorers and spies. Her invoking of the name of Alexander draws mixed reactions from the modern locals smiles, polite incomprehension, and the occasional guffaw. The better educated are amused at the thought of this flowered-salwar-kameez-and-burqa-clad young woman emulating the Greek hero. However, one cannot make a journey of this audacity without a dash of the quixotic in one&rsquos soul, as Albinia reflects as she trudges out into Tibetan mist with a 10-foot-long tent pole under her arm.

As the traveller&rsquos route rises into the Himalayas, the note of personal grief at the Indus&rsquos fate grows stronger. She is forced to confront the fact that her research is compiling a catalogue of human error and neglect, for the Indus is in great peril. The last straw for Albinia is the sight of the new, nearly complete, Chinese dam, a colossal structure that is already choking the river to nothing. This repeats a motif she has seen all along the river&rsquos length, where dams in Indian Punjab choke the Indus of Pakistani Punjab, and the dams of Pakistani Punjab in turn choke Sindh. Having found the source, which appears to be a prosaic hole in the ground, Albinia is overcome with a sense of anti-climax. The great river she has sought and found is a mirage she has already seen its death warrant. This is the thought she must take home with her.