Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon
Interesting facts
- In 1880 the Sikkimese explorer Kinthup was sent to float 500 marked logs down the river to prove it became the Brahmaputra, but he was sold into slavery.
- Kinthup eventually escaped and launched the logs four years late, but his warning letter went astray and nobody downstream was watching for them.
- Frederick Bailey and Henry Morshead's 1913 expedition finally confirmed that the Tsangpo is the upper course of the Brahmaputra.
- Kingdon-Ward named one cascade Rainbow Falls, about 21 m high; Hidden Falls, about 30 m high, lies just downstream of it.
- The 1998 team estimated the largest falls at roughly 33 m; Tibetan Buddhists regard the Pemako area as sacred and had kept the falls hidden from outsiders.
- In 2005 the magazine Chinese National Geography named the gorge's waterfalls the most beautiful in China.
- Tibet's highest recorded temperature, 43.6 °C, was measured near the Indian border at an elevation of about 600 m.
- Kayakers call it the 'Everest of Rivers': a Japanese attempt in 1993 lost a team member, and a 1998 expedition lost paddler Doug Gordon.
- The remote gorges may have helped inspire Shangri-La in James Hilton's 1933 novel Lost Horizon.
- Before reaching the gorge, the river has already flowed east for about 1,700 km from its source near Mount Kailash.
Why it is worth it
Where the Yarlung Tsangpo, the great river of southern Tibet, breaks through the eastern end of the Himalaya, it cuts the deepest canyon on land. Between two snow peaks, Namcha Barwa at 7,782 metres and Gyala Peri at 7,234 metres, the river swings in a tight hairpin around the flank of Namcha Barwa and drops into a gorge whose greatest depth reaches 6,009 metres. Over the length of the canyon the river falls from about 2,900 metres near the village of Pei, where it enters the gorge, to about 660 metres where it leaves Tibet for India. One measurement gives the whole canyon a length of some 505 km, slightly more than the Grand Canyon in the United States, and an average depth of more than 2,200 metres.
That vertical range compresses a whole continent of climates into a single valley. Lowland tropical forest at the bottom gives way, belt by belt, to subalpine coniferous forest and finally to alpine shrubland and tundra beneath the glaciers. The forests hold some of the tallest trees in Asia: in 2023 Chinese scientists measured a South Tibetan cypress here at 102.3 metres, then the tallest tree recorded on the continent. The Chinese government has protected the area as the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon nature reserve.
For outsiders the inner gorge remained one of the least known places on earth well into the 20th century. The plant hunter Frank Kingdon-Ward pushed into it in 1924 searching for a rumoured giant waterfall and found instead a series of steep rapids. Only in 1998 did a small team including Ken Storm and Ian Baker, with Monpa guides, reach the largest falls of the deepest section. River runners came later still: the first descent of the upper gorge by kayak was completed in 2002.
Getting there
The canyon lies in Nyingchi prefecture in southeastern Tibet. Bayi, the main town of Nyingchi, is about 62 km away; the river enters the gorge near the village of Pei. The nearest airport is Nyingchi Mainling Airport (LZY), about 82 km from the canyon.
Plan your visit
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Nearby places
- Namcha Barwa 16.7 km · mountain
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon, also known as the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon, the Tsangpo Canyon, the Brahmaputra Canyon or the Tsangpo Gorge, is a canyon along the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet Autonomous Region, China. It is the deepest canyon in the world, and at 504.6 kilometres (313.5 mi) is slightly longer than the Grand Canyon in the United States, making it one of the world's largest. The Yarlung Tsangpo originates near Mount Kailash and runs east for about 1,700 kilometres (1,100 mi), draining a northern section of the Himalayas before it enters the gorge just downstream of Pei, Tibet, near the settlement of Zhibe. The canyon has a length of about 240 kilometres (150 mi) as the gorge bends around Mount Namcha Barwa and cuts its way through the eastern Himalayas. Its waters drop from about 2,900 metres (9,500 ft) near Pei to about 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) at the end of the Upper Gorge where the Po Tsangpo River enters. The river continues through the Lower Gorge to the Indian border at an elevation of 660 metres (2,170 ft). The river then enters Arunachal Pradesh and eventually becomes the Brahmaputra.
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