From its source atop the sacred Buddhist site of Mount Kailaish, the River Yarlung Tsang Po flows nearly a thousand miles across the barren tundra of the Tibetan plateau. A pinch between two towering peaks, 7,782-meter Namcha Barwa and its little sister, Gyala Peri, forces the river southward around the “Great Bend,” where it plunges nearly ten thousand feet in less than a hundred miles through the Tsangpo Gorge. Tumbling into the jungle territory of the indigenous Adi in Arunachal Pradesh, Northeast India, the river takes an Adi name, the Siang.

Opened to foreign travelers in only 2003, the Siang remains one of the least explored gorges on the planet to anyone – other than the 100,000 Adi who inhabit the corridor, which sustains the last surviving rainforest in India. The Adi subsist much as they have for thousands of years in the steep, forested Siang River Valley, hunting; fishing; foraging; cultivating rice and wheat; and lodging in picturesque bamboo, cane, and thatch homes, which dot the landscape.

The river has only been descended a handful of times; and sections of the gorge are all but inaccessible by boat, making for some of the most preserved and pristine scenery remaining on the planet. Enormous sand beaches, flanked by showers warm enough for bathing, make for perfect camping; fifty species of mammals, including eight primates and several species of leopards, thrive in the surrounding jungle; and professional kayakers compare the quality of the whitewater among the greatest in the world, ranking with the Zambezi, the Grand Canyon, the Futaleufu, and the White Nile.

Sadly, the Indian government and the Chinese government upstream are concurrently working on projects that will flood the Siang Valley along with its rainforest, the wildlife, the Adi homeland, and the spectacular Siang River Gorge. Global Descents urges you to take advantage of the opportunity to explore this remote, wild, and astonishing place before it ceases to exist!