Brahmaputra River

This giant hydropower project, uh, it's, it's planned along the Yarlung Tsangpo River, which is, uh, a huge river, uh, flowing out of the Himalayas, uh, the seventh-longest, uh, river in China.

Uh, it flows through the Himalayas and eventually cuts down into, uh, India and then Bangladesh, where it is, it's the Brahmaputra in those countries.

Uh, so we've got this river, and it does something very interesting in this section of, uh, eastern, uh, Tibet.

It goes around a big mountain of the Himalayas.

Abhijit is an extremely distinguished hydrogeologist.

He's done tremendous and a very deep work in the aquifers, particularly in the Gangetic Plain and the Brahmaputra Basin near where he works and lives.

And why I really admire his work is the level of empiricism in the

actual research.

And several very prominent researchers who were actually working on other topics, they started latching on to this topic.

And people like Lex Van Heen from Kuala Lumpur University, Chalya Reid, whom we also know from MIT, Prashant Bhattacharya, my very good friend, they all started working on it, along with many Indian and Bangladeshi colleagues.

And then it started snowballing and people started finding arsenic all across the groundwater of southern Bengal, western Bangladesh, and slowly people also discovered them in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, you know, up in the Dantaji Basin, subsequently in the Brahmaputra Basin in Assam, and Punjab in the western part of India.

India, much of Bangladesh.

Didn't a snake find its way on board?

[laughs] Yes, it did, and that was when he was taking the landing craft headquarters from Calcutta round to Vizag, where it was going to be laid up, and, um, for safety's sake, they traveled through the Sundarbans, which I didn't know much about until Dad pointed out that that's where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra run into the sea, and it's, uh...

And that, what's now Bangladesh.

Right.

What's the best way to go?

Your boat will take you north up the Brahmaputra River.

Then you will go overland west to Tinsukea.

How long will that take?

Microplastics were found in three quarters of British dog and hedgehog food.

In the street dust of Urmia, Iran, and all Egyptian vulture pellets sampled in the Turkish city of Qorum contribute to atmospheric warming when airborne, were being deposited on high mountain snow packs in Turkey, are flushed out by the monsoon along the banks of the Brahmaputra River, are more prevalent in tumorous than in non-tumorous penile and testicular tissue, can be tasted in water by electronic tongues, might be filtered by engineered flamingo beaks, and may be introduced into eyeballs during cataract surgery, but do not appear to accumulate inside red worms.

Now, isn't that good news? Okay.

Particles from nitrile and latex lab gloves may be causing false positives in microplastics research.

The same may be said of the Munnu and the Feni rivers.

For the last two years I have done a good deal of trading in Assam, up the Brahmaputra River.

As far as Rangpur there are a great many villages on the banks, and the people are quiet and peaceable.

Then you don't go further south than Chittagong, uncle? No, the Burmese hold Arakan on the south, and indeed for some distance north of it.

Much the same as the Iraq and these other countries are under threat from what Turkey is doing with the Euphrates.

And India is under threat from what China is doing with the Brahmaputra.

Well, the same thing is happening with the Nile.

Water is becoming a major, major issue in Asia and the Middle East.

The same may be said of the Munnu and the Feni rivers.

For the last two years I have done a good deal of trading in Assam, up the Brahmaputra River.

As far as Rungpur there are a great many villages on the banks, and the people are quiet and peaceable.

Then you don't go further south than Chittagong, uncle? No, the Burmese hold Arakan on the south, and indeed for some distance north of it.

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The project makes use of the massive great bend of the Yarlung Tsangpo River, high in the Himalayas.

Chinese ecologists and the Chinese conservation NGO Shan Shui describe the canyon as a kind of gene bank for the planet.

It's home to an exceptional concentration of wildlife, including tigers, Tibetan brown bears, ancient forests, and the tallest tree in Asia.