Only the foreground’s river flats offer really lush grazing for the pictured cattle and sheep..
Their feet stand on the Pamir Plateau in western China…very close to the border with Tajikistan, and close to the edges of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Very little precipitation falls on the pictured plain; in a typical year, most of it would arrive as snow or sleet.
Local landscapes are truly “epic”; their low points are still more than 3,000 metres above sea level – much higher than the Australian continent’s tallest peak.
I took the photo just before noon on 24 May 2024.
My vantage point, on the east-facing edge of the Karakoram Highway, was a short distance northwest of Tashkurgan – the westernmost town in Xinjiang…and in all of China.
The previous day we had entered China, from Pakistan, via the Karakoram Highway’s Khunjerab Pass, which is often-billed as having “the world’s highest border crossing”. That claim is untrue – there’s an even higher one, not far-distant, on another road.
Still, at 4,693 metres, the Karakoram Highway’s frontier post is the highest of any that involves one of the world’s paved roads or major highways.
At noon on 24 May 2024 that frontier (& its thoroughly-unpleasant, intrusive & time-wasting “welcome”) were circa 140 kilometres behind us.
Circa 280 kilometres ahead was Kashgar/Kashi, where the Karakoram Highway ends.
You may be surprised to know that May 2024 did not provide our lifetimes’ highest-altitude encounters with livestock…as this series’ next chapter will illustrate.
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