Southern Tibet : vol.4 / Page 294 (Color Image)

0294	Southern Tibet : vol.4

country with high relative altitudes, with very steep, sometimes vertical, lines, a quite
different landscape from the flat, denudated and levelled *Chang-tang* where the
relative altitudes are insignificant and the lines chiefly horizontal. It is as if we
already here had a presentiment of the approach of the *Transhimalaya*, with its
very accentuated sculpture and its high rocky ranges.

*Gyanyak-la* itself is surrounded by innumerable small peaks, rocks and wild
ridges cropping up from enormous masses of debris. Between and at the base of
them, springs are often found. Just below the pass, the rocks consisted of greyish
red dense Albien-limestone and red and pink dense Barrémien-limestone. On the
top of the pass, there is a cairn.

The way down from the pass, that is on the top of a protuberance between
two small valleys, which soon join, is very steep. We follow its ice bed, and finally
turn to the S. E. until it joins the larger ice valley coming straight from the west.
A little higher up in this valley, there are two tents. Just above the point where
the joint brook pierces a steep limestone ridge in a very narrow gorge, our camp
was pitched. The grass was fairly good but dung was scarce.

Already from the pass, one could guess that the valley going down from
*Camp LXXXVII* was very narrow. On *December 14th* I went down some kilo-
meters through this valley and found it to be a very wild gorge between nearly
perpendicular mountain walls, as can be seen on Pan. 92, Tab. 15, and consisting
of the same Barrémien-limestone as before. So far as I went, or nearly 3 km., it did
not change its character and was winding in all directions. At one place it was
not quite one meter broad, and here the water is pressed together in the summer.
At some places it is nearly closed by blocks and boulders that have fallen down.
Still, a path is situated in this gorge. At two narrow passages it leaves the bottom
of the gorge and traverses the hills at the sides. At one place the valley is a little
wider, and there the grass is good. A travelling nomad had camped here with one
or two horses. The whole gorge is a series of the wildest and most picturesque
views. At the point where I turned back, the height was 4,798 m. So far as I
went, the whole bottom of the valley was filled with ice, and at the narrowest places,
there were ice-cascades, as clear as crystal; during the summer there must be small
waterfalls. The highest of these cascades was 1.5 m. high. Here and there stones
had fallen down on the ice, proving that the destruction of the rocks goes on con-
tinously. Some bends are very sharp around projecting pillars and pyramids. The
colour is the usual pink or yellow. Such narrow passages as this, I had never seen
on the *Chang-tang* plateau-land. But now we had reached a region that is not
far from the peripheric mountain tracts.

The Tibetans we met at *Camp LXXXVII*, gave some information about the
roads and names which as usual afterwards proved difficult to identify or control.

National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

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National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

Citation Information

OCR Text

National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books