My spare time, between lectures, paper-grading, and admin has been researching the region at the corner of Tibet, China, India, and Burma. This place looks quite amazing on Google Earth, particularly as the Tibet/China side has really good resolution and there are 1:200,000 scale maps available from the Russians. Plus, the Chinese tourists who travel through the Tibetan side seem much more savvy and willing and eager to post their photos on Google Earth, so you can get an idea of what it looks like. Spruce, hemlock, juniper, and birch in the lowlands and of course, my interest, are the supposed ice worms of the glaciers. Unfortunately the tourists have not yet posted a photo of a Tibetan ice worm.
Recently I stumbled on a video of an Outside Magazine movie here that's an incredible modern kayak expedition, even if 10 years old now. An international crew on 10,000 cfs Grand Canyon flows with a NZ West Coast gradient -- there's even a 70-100 foot waterfall that splits the river into an upper and lower gorge. These gnar gnar runners voices document their real respect for the Himlayan scale big water.
Worth watching all 45 minutes or so on-line. It's the movie of the trip that Peter Heller wrote about in Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet's Tsangpo River.
Watch more free documentaries
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
There is a really good book on the fist attempt on the Tsangpo, it is called "The Last River: The Tragic Race for Shangri-la". It is a very humbling book and a good read.
ReplyDelete