Beas River
— — a river that comes down from the pass.
Not only on a wall.
“One of the five rivers of Punjab. The Beas rises near the Rohtang Pass in Himachal Pradesh, runs through Manali and Kullu in a green braided valley, then turns west across the plains to meet the Sutlej near Harike. About four hundred and seventy kilometres, mostly bright cold water and stone.
Beas River, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Beas rises at Beas Kund, a small alpine tarn near the Rohtang Pass in Himachal Pradesh, at roughly four thousand metres. From its headwaters it runs about four hundred and seventy kilometres through the Kullu Valley, past Manali and Kullu town, then turns west onto the Punjab plain. It joins the Sutlej at the Harike Wetland near the Pakistan border. The river is one of the five tributaries of the Indus that give Punjab its name, alongside the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, and Sutlej.
The Beas runs cold and clear in its upper reaches, fed by snowmelt and the Parvati and Tirthan tributaries. The Pong Dam, completed in 1974 near Talwara, impounds the river into a reservoir of roughly one hundred square kilometres that hosts large wintering populations of bar-headed geese arriving from Central Asia. Below the dam the water flows slower and warmer through irrigated wheat country toward Harike. Whitewater rafting is run on a stretch between Pirdi and Jhiri in the Kullu Valley, where summer flows draw enough volume for grade-two and grade-three water.
The high valley is snowbound from December through March; Rohtang Pass typically closes by early November and reopens in May. Peak melt drives the river through June and July, when rafting flows are highest and the lower plains begin to flood. The monsoon, July to September, runs the water heavy with silt. October brings the cold-clear interval. The valley turns gold against bare granite, and the lower reservoir at Pong fills with arriving cranes and geese from Central Asia.