Yarlung Tsangpo

Originating from the Angsi Glacier in western Tibet, southeast of Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar, it later forms the South Tibet Valley. When leaving the Tibetan Plateau, the river forms the world's largest and deepest canyon, Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon. before passing into Arunachal Pradesh where it gets far wider and is called the Siang. After reaching Assam, the river becomes known as the Brahmaputra.

Description

The Yarlung Tsangpo River is the highest major river in the world. Its longest tributary is the Nyang River. Major tributaries of Yarlung Tsangpo include Nyangchu River, Lhasa River, Nyang River, and Parlung Tsangpo.

In Tibet the river flows through the South Tibet Valley, which is approximately 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) long and 300 kilometres (190 mi) wide. The valley descends from 4,500 metres (14,800 ft) above sea level to 3,000 metres (9,800 ft). As it descends, the surrounding vegetation changes from cold desert to arid steppe to deciduous scrub vegetation. It ultimately changes into conifer and rhododendron forest. The tree line is approximately at 3,200 metres (10,500 ft). Sedimentary sandstone rocks found near the Tibetan capital of Lhasa contain grains of magnetic minerals that record the Earth's alternating magnetic field current.

The basin of the Yarlung River, bounded by the Himalayas in the south and Kang Rinpoche and Nyenchen Tanglha Mountains in the north, has less severe climate than the adjacent northern (and higher-altitude) parts of Tibet, and is home to most of the population of the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

The Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon, formed by a horse-shoe bend in the river where it leaves the Tibetan Plateau and flows around Namcha Barwa, is the deepest, and possibly longest canyon in the world.

The Yarlung Tsangpo River has three major waterfalls in its course. The largest waterfall of the river, the "Hidden Falls", was not publicized in the West until 1998, when its sighting by Westerners was briefly hailed as a "discovery". They were even portrayed as the discovery of the great falls which had been the topic of stories told to early westerners by Tibetan hunters and Buddhist monks, but which had never been found by Western explorers at the time. The Chinese authorities contradicted, however, saying that Chinese geographers, who explored the gorge from 1973 on, had already taken pictures of the falls in 1987 from a helicopter.