The River's Tale: A Year in the Mekong

"Again, this is an adventure and a travel story. Ed Gargan goes from the source of the river in Tibet, downstream towards the sea, so the opposite direction to Alice Albinia. All of these great Asian rivers are very different at their mouths from what they’re like higher up. There is a huge contrast between the high mountains where they rise and the sprawling muddy deltas where they meet the sea. Just incidentally, I was told by a Hindu scholar that the word Mekong is actually connected to the Ganges – Ma Ganga became Mekong. Unfortunately I can’t find any evidence to prove that this is correct, so I haven’t put it in my book, but it’s an interesting idea and a lot of Indians think that it is the case. It’s one of those things that is hard to prove. I’m not sure that I ever found out the actual source of the name. But it’s an interesting tale. There’s another intriguing thing in both Alice Albinia’s and Ed Gargan’s books: when they’re at the upper reaches of their rivers, the Indus and the Mekong, they both come across places in Tibet where the river has been stopped dead in its tracks by a dam. The shock is overwhelming. These rivers have been there for millennia, and then it’s just not there anymore, because it has been dammed, in both cases by the Chinese. I quote both in my book, because it’s very striking how man has messed with our natural environment. Even the great rivers of the world are stopped in their tracks and used for hydroelectricity or irrigation, and of course below these dams the river is dry or nearly dry."