The River That Powers Civilizations
The River That Powers Civilizations
Pakistan is a country of 300 million people in an area only the size of Texas. Since time immemorial, water from the Indus River has sustained agriculture, life, and the birth of major civilizations.
The Indus was known to ancient Indians in Sanskrit as Sindhu and to Persians as Hindu. From the First Persian Empire, the name passed to the Greeks as Indós. It was then adopted as Indus by the Romans.
Interestingly, the name India is derived from Indus.
The Indus River begins humbly as a mountain spring. Fed by snowmelt, glacial meltwater, scant rain, and tributary rivers from the mountains of the Himalayas, Karakoram, and Hindu Kush, it flows almost 2,000 miles to the Arabian Sea.
The river’s course takes it from its origins in Western Tibet northwest through the disputed region of Kashmir. It then bends sharply to the left in a 17,000-foot-deep gorge after the Nanga Parbat massif (mountain). From there it flows south-by-southwest through Pakistan ending as a large delta emptying into the sea near the port city of Karachi.
The river’s statistics are impressive. It drains an area of about 430,000 square miles. With an annual flow of 58 cubic miles of water, it ranks as one of the 50 largest rivers in the world. It supports the ecosystems of temperate forests, plains, and arid countryside.
Ancient Civilizations
The river is historically important to many cultures in the region. The Indus Valley Civilization arose there during the third millennium BCE. It was one of the largest urban human habitations in the ancient world.
In the second millennium BCE, the Punjab region was mentioned in the Rigveda hymns as Sapta Sindhu and in the Avesta religious texts as Saptha Hindu (both terms meaning "seven rivers"). Other ancient civilizations in the Indus Valley include Gandhāra and the Ror dynasty of Sauvīra.
The Shot
Our group stopped several times to admire and photograph the Indus in November. The river was at its seasonal low for flow. We could only imagine what it looked like flooding its banks in the monsoon months from July to September.
The Indus River outside Skardu with rows of planted poplar trees on the right
We stopped outside the town of Kachura near Skardu to capture this small tributary winding its way to the mighty Indus in the background. I piloted my drone to several locations before settling on this composition.
Thanks for looking,
Chuck Derus