Dihang gorges
| Dihang gorges | ||
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 Foothills of the ravines |
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| location | Tibet , People's Republic of China | |
| Geographical location | 29 ° 46 '11 " N , 94 ° 59' 23" E | |
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The Dihang gorges , also Yarlung-Tsangpo-Canyon , Yarlung-Zangbo-Canyon , Yalu-Zangbu-Canyon ( 雅魯藏布 大 峽谷 / 雅鲁藏布 大 峡谷 , Yǎlǔzàngbù Dàxiágǔ ) or Tsangpo-Canyon , are a deep and long canyon in china .
The Yarlung Tsangpo , often just called Tsangpo, Zangbo or Zangbu ("The Cleansing One"), flows through the gorges . This is the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra and rises on the Kailash . From there, it runs almost straight east for 1,700 kilometers and drains the adjacent northern part of the Himalayas before entering the gorge near Pe in Tibet.
The canyon has a length of a little more than 240 kilometers and the deepest and steepest places in the section in which it curves south of the Gyala Peri ( 7294 m ) around the Namjagbarwa ( 7782 m ). Overall, the Yarlung Tsangpo Canyon, with a length of 504.6 kilometers and a depth of up to 6,009 meters, is the world's largest canyon and is largely inaccessible.
At the current border of the Mêdog district , the Yarlung Tsangpo enters Arunachal Pradesh in India and becomes a Brahmaputra there.
Concealment
Because of the beauty of the gorges, its remoteness and mystery is believed that the gorges the famous Shangri-La in the book Lost Horizon by James Hilton served as a template.
The Dihang gorges, including the area at their lower end, are located in the Tibetan region of Pemakö or Pemako ( Mêdog ), a destination of Buddhist pilgrimages since ancient times . Pemakö is the most famous example of a Beyül among Buddhists , a geographically as well as spiritually and religiously “pure and hidden land”. According to belief, it is a place that has a special geomancy and self-created power points , in which all features of the landscape correspond to certain parts of the body.
The gorge has a unique ecosystem with animal and plant species that have hardly been explored and are almost free from human influence. An exception is, for example, the hunting of the rare takin by the tribes living here . The climate ranges from subtropical to arctic . The gorge is very narrow in several places.
Since the 1990s, Yarlung Tsangpo has been the destination of a number of expeditions conducted by groups engaged in river exploration and white water rafting . The river was called the "Mount Everest of Rivers" because of the extreme conditions. The first attempt to cross the gorge by kayak was made in 1993 by a Japanese group who lost one of their members in the river.
In October 1998 a National Geographic Society sponsored kayak expedition attempted to descend the Tsangpo Gorge. Troubled by unexpectedly high water levels, the expedition ended in tragedy when professional kayak Doug Gordon was killed.
The largest waterfalls in the river, the "Hidden Falls" of the Tsangpo Gorge, were only discovered for the western world in 1998 by a group of three Americans and their guides, after an earlier expedition had to turn back in 1924 in search of the fabulous waterfalls without having achieved anything. The discoverers estimated the height of the falls to be more than thirty meters.
The waterfalls, like the rest of the Pemako area, were considered sacred by the Buddhist residents and were kept hidden from outsiders until the late 1990s.
In January and February 2002, an international group managed the first successful descent of the upper Tsangpo Gorge.
Projects
While the government authorities have announced the establishment of a "Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon" national park, in contrast to this, plans became known in 2002 to tame the water of the Tsanpo by a dam and to use it to generate electricity as well as to supply other regions with water. Accordingly, there are plans in China to build a dam in Mêdog (Metog) at the southeasternmost point of the river bend around the Namjagbarwa , in which the Yarlung Tsangpo changes its direction from northeast to southwest. It could be 160 m high and with 26 turbines and an output of 40,000 MW it could become the largest hydroelectric power plant in the world.
The project is controversial and may not be realized (as of 2018). India in particular criticized the project because it feared a reduction in the amount of water downstream. However, there are even greater ambitions on the Indian side. Between 2011 and 2016, seven large power plants were completed on the Brahmaputra tributaries in India, more are under construction, and above all: over 140 are in the planning stage. There are also concrete plans in India to divert water from the north to the south. The ambitious project envisages the connection of 14 rivers from the Himalayas with 16 rivers on the Indian peninsula in order to shift water from surplus areas to scarce areas. In addition to controlling floods, 35 million additional hectares of land are to be irrigated and over 34,000 megawatts of electricity generated.
Web links
- Into the Tsangpo Gorge Tsangpo Kayak Expedition, Outside Online
- Tourist information, China Tibet Information Center
literature
- Todd Balf: The Last River: The Tragic Race for Shangri-la . Three Rivers Press, 2001. ISBN 0-609-80801-X .
- Michael Mcrae: The Siege of Shangri-La: The Quest for Tibet's Sacred Hidden Paradise . Broadway, 2002. ISBN 978-0767904858 .
- Peter Heller: Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet's Tsangpo River . Rodale Books, 2004. ISBN 1-57954-872-5 .
Videos
- Scott Lindgren (2002), Into the Tsangpo Gorge . Slproductions.
Individual evidence
- ^ The New Largest Canyon in the World - The Great Canyon of Yarlung Tsangpo River (Tibet) . ( Memento from February 28, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ China at a Glance ; Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the Federal Republic of Germany, February 9, 2011 , accessed on February 18, 2018
- ↑ Yang Qinye, Zheng Du: Tibetan Geography . China Intercontinental Press, pp. 30-31, ISBN 7508506650 .
- ↑ Zheng Du, Zhang Qingsong, Wu Shaohong: Mountain Geoecology and Sustainable Development of the Tibetan Plateau Kluwer 2000, ISBN 0-7923-6688-3 , S. 312
- ^ Yarlung Tsangpo River in China. Satellite photo and data
- ↑ Detlev Göbel: Buddhist pilgrimages. In: Buddhismus Heute Nr. 45, 2008 , accessed February 18, 2018
- ^ Tsangpo Expedition Triumphs on "The Everest of Rivers" - Tibet's Legendary Tsangpo . Outside online
- ^ Wickliffe W. Walker: Courting The Diamond Sow: A Whitewater Expedition on Tibet's Forbidden River. National Geographic, 2000. ISBN 0-7922-7960-3
- ^ Nima Dorjee: Fabled Tibetan Waterfalls Finally Discovered. Tibet Environmental Watch, January 7, 1999 ( September 27, 2007 memento on the Internet Archive )
- ^ Ian Baker: The Heart of the World: A journey to the last secret place . Souvenir Press, 2004, ISBN 0-285-63742-8 .
- ↑ German: Ian Baker: The heart of the world: a journey to the last hidden place . Starnberg Pendo, 2007, ISBN 978-3-86612-097-6 .
- ↑ Peter Heller: Tsangpo Expedition - Liquid Thunder. Outside online
- ^ Tashi Tsering: Hydro Logic: Water for Human Development. An Analysis Of China'S Water Management and Politics. 53 p., Tibet Justice Center: 2002, p. 21 (PDF; 909 kB)
- ↑ Karl Grobe: Giant dam on Yarlung Tsangpo. In: Berliner Zeitung . June 3, 2010, accessed July 10, 2015 .
- ↑ Water fight at Yarlung Tsangpo
- ↑ bibcode : 2007AGUFM.H11C0644Z
- ↑ Chinese engineers propose world's biggest hydro-electric project in Tibet
- ^ Let the Brahmaputra Flow. Tibet Environmental Watch - Editorial ( Memento from June 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Hydropower Development in Arunachal Pradesh; Hydro Power Projects ; India Ministry of Power, April 2, 2012 , accessed February 16, 2018
- ↑ Modi's Grand Plan to Divert Himalayan Rivers Faces Obstacles; Environmental Change and Security Program, December 22, 2015 , accessed February 16, 2018
- ↑ India and China arm on the water ; Der Standard, April 21, 2016 , accessed February 16, 2018