The Sutlej, the river of a hundred courses that powers northern India
In the Mahabharata, the sage Vasishtha leapt into a flooded Himalayan river, which mistook him for unquenchable fire and split into a hundred channels to avoid him. That legend gave the Sutlej its old name, Satadru, and today the longest of Punjab's five rivers drives several major hydroelectric dams.
The river rises near Mount Kailash on the Tibetan plateau, around 4,570 metres above sea level, beside the lakes Manasarovar and Rakshastal, and is fed by snow and glaciers. Of four rivers that legend says flow from holy Manasarovar, the Sutlej is the only one genuinely linked to it, though by channels that are dry most of the year. It runs west-northwest for about 260 kilometres in Tibet as the Langqên Zangbo, or Elephant River, before entering India in Himachal Pradesh at Khab.
Its upper valley was once the heart of Zhangzhung, the ancient civilisation of western Tibet, whose palace ruins at Kyunglung survive near Mount Kailash; their nomadic descendants herd yaks there today. Much later the river marked the eastern edge of Ranjit Singh's Sikh Empire, and in the early 18th century it carried deodar timber to towns along its banks.
Leaving the hills near Ropar, the river crosses the Punjab plains, meets the Beas near Harike, and eventually joins the Chenab to form the Panjnad, which enters the Indus at Mithankot, making the Sutlej the easternmost Indus tributary. Evidence suggests the Indus Valley Civilisation also flourished around Ropar. Under the Indus Waters Treaty its flow is assigned to India, where the Sirhind Canal, the Bhakra Main Line and the Rajasthan canal take most of it for irrigation.
The Bhakra Dam serves Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana, and the river's power stations include Bhakra at 1,325 megawatts, Karcham Wangtoo at 1,000 and Nathpa Jhakri at 1,500. Below Bhakra, above the Ropar barrage, mean annual flow is about 14 million acre feet.
Source: Sutlej
