The Parang River (), also called Para River () and Pare Chu () is an upstream tributary of the

Sutlej River The Sutlej River or the Satluj River is a major river in Asia, flowing through China, India and Pakistan, and is the longest of the five major rivers of the Punjab region. It is also known as ''Satadru''; and is the easternmost tributary of th ...

, that originates in the Indian state of

Himachal Pradesh Himachal Pradesh (; Sanskrit: ''himācāl prādes;'' "Snow-laden Mountain Province") is a States and union territories of India, state in the northern part of India. Situated in the Western Himalayas, it is one of the thirteen Indian Himalayan ...

and ends in Himachal Pradesh again, but flows through

Ladakh Ladakh () is a region administered by India as a union territory and constitutes an eastern portion of the larger Kashmir region that has been the subject of a Kashmir#Kashmir dispute, dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947 and India an ...

and

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups s ...

before doing so. The origin of the river is near the Parang La pass in the Spiti subdistrict. After its circuitous journey, it joins the Spiti River near Sumdo in Himachal Pradesh and the combined river then joins

Sutlej The Sutlej River or the Satluj River is a major river in Asia, flowing through China, India and Pakistan, and is the longest of the five major rivers of the Punjab region. It is also known as ''Satadru''; and is the easternmost tributary of t ...

.: "... the Para River which, after passing through a small part of Tibet, later enters Spiti and joins the Spiti River."

Name

The name "Para River", which becomes ''Pare Chu'' in Tibetan, is based on the shepherds' ground of ''Para'' in Karab-Bargyok (in the Tibetan part of its course). In

Kinnauri Kinnauri is the most widely used language in Kinnaur. The languages have seen different nomenclatures in written literature. Kinnauri was mentioned as Kunawaree (Gerard 1842, Cunninham 1844), Kanauri (Konow 1905), Kanawari (Bailey 1909) and ...

, the river was called ''Parati''. The Tibetans and Ladakhis were more likely to call it by the name of locale above their own, as the "Rupshu river" or "Tsotso river", Tsotso being the name of the valley in West Tibet through which it flows. Henry Strachey regarded it as the western headwater of

, and called it "Rupshu Sutlej" or "Tsotso Sutlej".

Course

Lahul-Spiti-Bashahr-Parang-River-in-a-map-of-Punjab-1907

The Parang River originates in

Spiti Spiti (pronounced as piti in Bhoti language) is a high-altitude region of the Himalayas, located in the north-eastern part of the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. The name "Spiti" means "The middle land", i.e. the land between Tib ...

and ends in Spiti, taking a circuitous route through

and

Ngari Khorsum Kyide Nyimagon (), whose original name was Khri-skyid-lding, was a member of the Yarlung dynasty of Tibet and a descendant of emperor Langdarma. He migrated to Western Tibet and founded the kingdom of Ngari Khorsum ("the three divisions of Ng ...

(West Tibet). British geographer

Alexander Cunningham Major General Sir Alexander Cunningham (23 January 1814 – 28 November 1893) was a British Army engineer with the Bengal Sappers who later took an interest in the history and archaeology of India. In 1861, he was appointed to the newly crea ...

wries: Interestingly, Spiti River flows by the Parang Pass only 10 km to its west. The Parang River joins it about 80 km downstream at Sumdo, near the Tibet border. Cunningham states that the Spiti and Parang rivers are roughly equal in volume. But Parang is only a "very large rushing torrent" while Spiti is very deep rapid river. After the union of the two at Sumdo (the old Chang-Razing), the combined river flows south for about , where it joins the

Notes

References

Bibliography

* * * * {{citation , last=Strachey , first=Henry , title=Physical Geography of Western Tibet , publisher=William Clows and Sons , location=London , date=1854 , url=https://archive.org/details/physicalgeograp00stragoog , via=archive.org , ref={{sfnref, Strachey, Physical Geography of Western Tibet, 1854

External links

* Th
Para River basin
marked on OpenStreetMap. Rivers of Himachal Pradesh Rivers of Ladakh Rivers of Tibet Indus basin