A Bharatiya Who Mapped Route from Ladakh to Lhasa without Modern Technology

GG News Bureau
New Delhi, 1st Feb.  February 1st holds great significance in both national and global history for several important reasons. One of these reasons is the discovery of the Himalayan region by Pandit Nain Singh Rawat during British rule. Nain Singh was born on October 21, 1830, in Uttarakhand and unfortunately passed away on February 1, 1882, due to a heart attack. He was born in the village of Bhatkura, located in the Johar Valley of Uttarakhand’s Pithoragarh district, which borders both Bharat and Nepal. Nain Singh’s father had two marriages, which led to his exile from the village, despite being born in Milam. After 27 years, he was finally allowed to return to his village in 1847. At that time, Milam was one of the largest villages in Kumaon and was situated along the route to Western Tibet. Consequently, it had a thriving market where the residents traded goods with Tibet.

The first person to gauge Lhasa’s height was Rawat

He crossed the Brahmaputra River, drew a map connecting Lhasa and Ladakh. He was regarded as Yayavar Rahul Sankrityayan’s guru. Because of his great reputation, newspapers all over the world carried prominent notice of Rawat’s passing. “Pandit Nain Singh’s contribution to making the map of Asia is more than that of any other explorer,” noted renowned scholar and writer Sir Henry Yule.

He was the first person in the 19th century to map all of Tibet without the use of any contemporary technology. The British government respected him greatly for his work. He was the only person from Bharatiya to be awarded the “Petron Gold Medal,” the greatest accolade in the field of survey.

A postage stamp bearing his name was released by the Indian government in 2004. In honor of his birth anniversary, Google created a doodle in 2017.

During his life, Nain Singh traveled on six occasions. whose length totaled forty-two thousand kilometers. He created a map from Ladakh to Lhasa during these travels. He measured Lhasa’s height for the first time. In addition, he determined Lhasa’s latitude and longitude by looking at the positions of the stars, which is extremely similar to the computations made using the contemporary machinery. The Tsangpo and the Brahmaputra were found to be one and the same while he was trekking 800 kilometers along the Tsangpo river. The sources of Sutlej and Indus were also found by Nain Singh.