Tibet Highways

This is a shot along the Xining-Jyekundo Highway between Mado (Maduo) and Domda (Qingshui He) just as the sun was about to set. The elevation here is about 4500m.

I came across an article a while back that was about the construction of the railway from Golmud to Lhasa. The article is from December 2003 and it stated that up to that point there had been no deaths during the construction of the railway due to altitude sickness. The article, from a Chinese website, went on to talk about deaths that occured while building highways across the Tibetan Plateau, particularly the highways from Xining to Jyekundo (Yushu), Sichuan to Lhasa and Qinghai to Lhasa. I was amazed by the statistics that I read. During the construction of the Sichuan-Tibet and Qinghai-Tibet highways a total of 3000 people were killed or 1 person for every 2 kilometers. Those are pretty high numbers, but not nearly as high as the number killed building the highway from Xining to Jyekundo. Over 10,000 people died building the highway to Jyekundo (which was finished in 1943)! From Xining to Jyekundo is about 825km / 516 miles. That equals 12 deaths per kilometer or 19 deaths per mile! That is insane! I don't think I can ever travel on these highways again without thinking about how many people died building them. I thought I would include some pictures of these main highways that go through the Tibetan Plateau.

 

The top picture is along the route from Darlag to Machen at an elevation of 3800m. The picture above is along the south side of Amnye Machen near the town of Huashixia at 4100m.

This is near Amnye Machen along the north face at 4100m.

Comments

[vistet]

There is an article in the latest issue of High Altitude Medicine, written by the doctors in charge of the Railway Project. Highly technical, but still interesting since it details how many were treated, how the viewed prevention and how many were helicopter evacuated. Free download at
the moment , at http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ham.2006.7.275