Changtang

alternative Chang Tang · alternative Chang Thang · alternative Changthang · alternative Qangtang

1. A part of the high altitude Tibetan Plateau in western and northern Tibet extending into southeastern Ladakh, India.

   In elevation the lowest limit of Changtang may be reckoned about 13,800 feet, and the highest of Rong 14,300, the mean line of demarcation being 14,000 feet.

   1853 November 22, H. Strachey, Physical Geography of Western Tibet, Royal Geographical Society, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 22

   4 more examples

   Written by two American professors of anthropology on the basis of their scientific study and investigation in Qangtang area, Tibet, for 10 months from 1986 to 1988: description of the way of life of the Tibetan herdsmen and their economy and life before and after the peaceful liberation, especially their economic and religious life since the implementation of reform and opening in 1979, proving that Chinese government’s special policies and flexible measures are favourable for Tibet’s economic development.

   [1994, Catalogue of Chinese Publications in Tibetan Studies (1949-1991), 1st edition, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 252, column 2

   Our path across the trackless Changtang was littered with the impressive skulls and horns of wild yaks slaughtered by the modern-day poachers of Tibet. Yielding close to a tonne of meat, it pays to shoot a wild yak — provided that you own a truck to take your kill to the closest village or town hundreds of miles away. Unfortunately, the number of truck-owning Tibetan and Chinese poachers in certain parts of the Changtang is increasing rapidly.

   2002, Michel Peissel, Tibet: The Secret Continent, Thomas Dunne Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 33

   We had climbed, almost imperceptibly, on to the Changtang, the name for the northern part of the Tibetan plateau, one of the most remote and least known regions of the world, as well as being one of the highest. Remote and unknown to outsiders, that is: the Changtang is also home to about half a million nomadic herders, or drokba.

   2005, Nick Middleton, Extremes Along the Silk Road: Adventures off the World's Oldest Superhighway, John Murray, →ISBN, →OCLC, →OL, page 131

   Observing Lake Yaniugol, rising high in the steppe, he writes: “It settled like a sacred host of jade upon the sand. It appeared to us at twilight, in the hollow of a ledge, flanked to the north by the sharp incisors of the Kunlun peaks soaring to 6,000 meters, and to the south by the Changtang. Behind this shimmering disk, the secret plateau.”

   2021 December 3, Liesl Schillinger, quoting Sylvain Tesson, “Books That Satisfy Your Yearning for Far-Off Places”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 03 Dec 2021, Travel