Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Henry Strachey (1816–1912) was a British officer of the Bengal Army. Despite a longstanding prohibition by the Tibetan authorities on the entry of Europeans into Tibet, Strachey surveyed parts of western Tibet during the late 1840s.
He was the second son of Edward Strachey, second son of Sir Henry Strachey, 1st Baronet. His brothers included Sir Richard Strachey, Sir John Strachey and Sir Edward Strachey, 3rd Baronet.
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Tibetan surveys
In 1846, while a lieutenant of the 66th Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry, Strachey explored the Tibetan regions surrounding Lakes Manasarovar and Rakshastal.
In the autumn of that year, Strachey travelled from Almora into western Tibet, reaching the lakes of Cho Lagan (Rakas Tal) and Cho Mapan (Manasarovar) and the valley of Pruang (Purang) in Gnari. His outward route ran through Pithoragarh, Dharchula and the Chaudans region into Byans, following the Kali River and then the Kuthi Yankti past Gunji to the village of Kuthi, and crossed into Tibet by the Lampiya Dhura pass at the end of September. He continued northwards past Gyanima to Rakas Tal and Manasarovar, viewing Kailas and the Gangri range, and then turned south into the Pruang valley and Taklakot. He returned to Kumaon over the Lipulekh Pass on 8 October 1846, descending the Kali valley by Kalapani and Garbyang, and reached Almora on 5 November.
During the journey Strachey took barometric and boiling-point measurements along the route, described both lakes and their outlets, and identified the channel connecting Manasarovar to Rakas Tal which Moorcroft had failed to locate in 1812.
Strachey recorded that at the confluence above Tala-Kawa the western branch, the Kuthi Yankti, was about a third larger than the eastern branch in both channel width and volume of water, and nearly four times as long from source to confluence, yet it was the smaller eastern branch that gave its name to the united river. He attributed the name to the Kalapani springs, which he described as unimportant tributaries rather than the true source. He nonetheless reported that the eastern stream was then the boundary between British and Nepalese territory and that, according to local Bhotias, it had always been so; on this basis he considered contemporary maps mistaken in applying the name Kali to the western river and drawing the boundary line along it.
He found a channel between the lakes, suggesting that Manasarovar, and not Rakshastal, was the source of the Sutlej River. Strachey's brother Richard, with J. E. Winterbottom, continued the exploration of the lakes in 1848.
In 1847 Strachey was appointed to a boundary commission of Jammu and Kashmir led by Alexander Cunningham. The third member was Thomas Thomson. The commission was set up to fix the boundary between Tibet and Ladakh. Raja Gulab Singh's forces had previously annexed Ladakh and invaded Tibet in 1841. The British deemed it important to formalise the boundary so as to prevent any future conflicts. However, the Tibetan authorities did not participate. Neither was the commission given permission to enter Tibet. The commission based itself at Leh, Ladakh. It eventually drafted a description of the boundary and retired. In 1848 Strachey was the first European to find the Siachen Glacier, and ascended it for 2 miles.
In 1849, Henry Strachey and his brother Richard Strachey briefly entered Tibet by following the Niti Pass out of Garhwal. Their route included Tholing Monastery and Hanle.
Strachey's Tibetan surveys won him the Royal Geographical Society's Patron's Medal in 1852.
Family
On 6 September 1859, by this time a captain of the 66th Goorkha Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry, he married Joanna Catherine, daughter of Rudolphe Cloete, of Newlands, Cape Town, South Africa. The wedding was in Claremont, Cape Town. Their only child was Julia Charlotte, who in 1884 married barrister William Chance (2 July 1853 – 9 April 1935), son of James Timmins Chance of the glassmaking company Chance Brothers. Julia was an amateur sculptor, and a supporter of the Arts and Crafts movement. The couple's house, Orchards in Surrey, was designed by architect Edwin Lutyens. In 1902, Sir William Chance succeeded his father to the Chance baronetcy. Julia, Lady Chance died in 1949.
Writings
"Narration of a Journey to Cho Lagan, (Rakas Tal), Cho Mapan (Manasarowar), and the valley of Pruang in Gnari, Hundes, in September and October 1846", The Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Volume 17, 1848, pp. 98–120, 127–182, 327–351
"Physical Geography of Western Tibet", Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 23, 1853.