Depsang Plains

There is another route from Baltí Púlú to Sarsil from the Depsang Plains, but it is only used in summer, on account of the cold in these plains being very severe in winter.

1868 [1866 April 22], W. H. Johnson, “Report on his Journey to Ilchí, the Capital of Khotan, in Chinese Tartary.”, in The Journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London, volume XXXVII, London: John Murray, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 39

It seems to me that I entered the hills, from the Indian side, at Barakau on the 25th of June last; that I reached the ‘top’ on the Depsang plains on the 14th of this month; and that to-day I have emerged on the Central Asian side of the hills into the plains of Eastern Turkestan.

1876 [1874 September 27], J. Scully, “A Contribution to the Ornithology of Eastern Turkestan”, in Allan Hume, editor, Stray Feathers: A Journal of Ornithology for India and its Dependencies, volume IV, Calcutta: Calcutta Central Press, →OCLC, page 59

They were not far now from the “Roof of Asia,” or Depsang Plains, which they reached after crossing the Shyok once more, and making a few more toilsome marches. The approach to this remarkable feature was simply a pass gradually ascending between low sandhills, without a particle of snow, and finally leading on to a desert of undulating slopes, stretching east and west and north, and over the brown rim of which peered the small tops of the highest mountains in the world.

1894 December 1, Charles Murray, 7th Earl of Dunmore, “The Pamirs : being a Narrative of a Year's Expedition on Horseback and on Foot through Kashmir, Western Thibet, Chinese Tartary, and Russian Central Asia”, in The Spectator, number 3,466, page 753, column 1

Followed two more weeks of marching,—rougher marching this time,—through the core of the lofty mountains that divide India from Central Asia; across the terrible Depsang Plains, seventeen thousand feet up; and over four passes choked with snow; till they came upon a deserted fort, set in the midst of stark space, and knew that here, indeed, was the limit of human habitation. Next day the work of exploration had begun in earnest.

1910, Maud Diver, “The Valley of Decision”, in The Great Amulet, New York: John Lane Company, →OCLC, page 368

The uplifted western rim of the plateau concealed all the world except a few ice-peaks that lifted above it. One of them was K2, the highest peak in the world bar Mount Everest, but from the Depsang Plains, which are sixteen or seventeen thousand feet, K2 and its companions looked strangely truncated.

1930, Owen Lattimore, “Suget and Karakoram”, in High Tartary, Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, →OCLC, page 345