Namcha Barwa
Interesting facts
- The Tibetan name has several readings; the most widely accepted, a spear piercing the sky, is traced to a battle episode of the Epic of King Gesar.
- The mountain is a sacred site of the Bon religion and is sometimes called the father of all Tibetan mountains.
- China's National Geography magazine once ranked Namcha Barwa first among the ten most beautiful mountains in China.
- At 7,782 metres it is ranked around 27th among the highest mountains on Earth.
- It crowns a range about 180 km long that geologists call the Namche Barwa syntaxis, the knot in which the Himalayan arc terminates.
- Although the Himalaya are said to end here, high ranges such as the Hengduan Mountains continue some 300 km further east.
- The eleven summiteers of 30 October 1992 were six Chinese and Tibetan climbers and five Japanese, reaching the top just after midday.
- The 1950 Assam–Tibet earthquake, one of the most powerful of the 20th century, shook this region and temporarily blocked the Yarlung Tsangpo.
- British explorer Frederick Marshman Bailey, travelling the Tsangpo in 1913, is credited as the first European to see the peak.
- The summit is snow-covered all year, and through the rainy season from April to October it is usually wrapped in cloud.
Why it is worth it
Namcha Barwa is the mountain where the Himalaya end. At 7,782 metres it is the highest peak of the Namcha Barwa Himal in south-eastern Tibet, and under the classic definition of the range as stretching from the Indus to the Brahmaputra it forms the chain's eastern anchor, just as Nanga Parbat anchors the west. No peak further east on Earth exceeds 7,600 metres. Its pyramid of snow and ice rises between 5,000 and 6,800 metres above the river at its foot, and with a prominence of over 4,100 metres it ranks as the third most prominent summit in the Himalaya after Everest and Nanga Parbat.
The mountain stands inside the Great Bend of the Yarlung Tsangpo, where the river that has flowed eastward across the Tibetan plateau swings sharply around the massif and plunges into one of the deepest gorges in the world before emerging in India as the Siang and becoming the Brahmaputra. Across the gorge, about 22 km to the north-north-west, rises its sister peak Gyala Peri at 7,294 metres. The botanist and explorer Frank Kingdon-Ward, who travelled the gorge in the 1920s, recorded a prophecy among the Kongpo Tibetans that the mountain would one day collapse into the Tsangpo and force the river to change its course.
British surveyors fixed the peak's position in 1912, but the region stayed almost unvisited for decades. Chinese mountaineers began exploring routes in the 1980s without reaching the top, and after Batura Sar in the Karakoram was climbed in 1976, Namcha Barwa was considered the highest unclimbed independent mountain in the world. A joint Chinese-Japanese expedition reconnoitred it in 1990; a second reached 7,460 metres in 1991 but lost a member in an avalanche. On 30 October 1992 a third joint expedition, climbing the south ridge over the intermediate summit of Nai Peng, put eleven climbers on top. No further ascents have been recorded.
Getting there
Namcha Barwa lies in Nyingchi prefecture of the Tibet Autonomous Region. The nearest city is Bayi, the prefectural seat, about 68 km away in a straight line. Nyingchi Mainling Airport (LZY) is about 79 km away.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon 16.7 km · gorge
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Namcha Barwa or Namchabarwa is a mountain peak lying in southeastern Tibet. The traditional definition of the Himalaya extending from the Indus River to the Brahmaputra would make it the eastern anchor of the entire mountain chain, and it is the highest peak of its own section as well as Earth's easternmost peak over 7,600 metres (24,900 ft). It lies in the Nyingchi Prefecture of Tibet. It is the highest peak in the 180 km long Namcha Barwa Himal range, which is considered the easternmost syntaxis/section of the Himalaya in southeastern Tibet and northeastern India where the Himalaya are said to end, although high ranges actually continue another 300 km to the east.
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