Yarlung Tsangpo River

Yarlung Tsangpo River

Yarlung Tsangpo or Yarlung River is a watercourse that originates at Tamlung Tso lake in western Tibet, southeast of Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar. It later forms the South Tibet Valley and Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon, before passing through the state of Arunachal Pradesh, India, where it is known as the Dihang.

It is sometimes called Yarlung Zangbo or Yarlung Zangbo Jiang (Tibetan: ཡར་ཀླུངས་གཙང་པོ་, Wylie: yar kLungs gTsang po, ZYPY: Yarlung Zangbo), or Yalu Zangbu River (simplified Chinese: 雅鲁藏布江; traditional Chinese: 雅魯藏布江; pinyin: Yǎlǔ Zàngbù Jiāng). The suffix Tsangpo (or Zangbo, Zangbu) denotes a river flowing from or through Tsang, i.e. Tibet west of Lhasa.

Downstream from Arunachal Pradesh the river becomes wider and at this point is called the Brahmaputra River. From Assam (India) the river enters Bangladesh at Ramnabazar. From there until about 200 years ago it used to flow eastward and joined Megna River near Bhairavbazar. This old channel has been gradually dying now. At present the main channel of the river is called Jamuna River, which flows southward to meet Ganges, which in Bangladesh is called the Padma.

When leaving the Tibetan Plateau, the Yarlung River flows in the world's largest and deepest canyon (bigger than Grand Canyon), Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon. The gorge has been described as "the highest river in the world" by the organizers of a kayaking expedition, although it's not clear from their press release what definition was used.