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Tibet as barren, stony high-altitude valleys framed by snowy mountain ranges. Traditionally, Kham is also called Chushi Gangdruk, meaning“ four rivers, six mountains” and lending its name to the Tibetan resistance movement of the 1950s. Three of Asia’ s largest rivers, the Yangtze, Mekong, and Salween, have carved their gorges side by side through the mountainous wilderness, forming the UNESCO-listed Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas. Not far away rises the Irrawaddy, Asia’ s fourth major river.
Even Asia’ s mightiest river starts small. The upper Yangtze, less than one hundred metres wide, has little in common with the vast, kilometrewide waterway that disgorges( along with unimaginable amounts of plastic waste) into the East China Sea near Shanghai. It even bears a different name:“ Jinsha” which appears on maps at this point. Mao Zedong’ s Long March, the flight of his Red Army from superior Nationalist forces, passed through here. History, as dictated by the victors, reframes this retreat as a strategic withdrawal. The site where Mao and his followers crossed the muddy brown waters is now marked by a monument in Communist concrete chic, commemorating the Workers’ and Peasants’ Army. At just under 2,000 metres above sea level, my GPS registers the lowest point of our journey. The sun beats down, and cacti grow by the roadside.
To grasp the scale of this land: geographical Tibet, encompassing the plateau and its surrounding mountain ranges in China and neighbouring countries, spans 2.5 million square kilometres, slightly smaller than Western Australia. According to official Chinese terminology, the“ Tibet Autonomous Region” refers to the territory that was independent until
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