u/Alive-Drama-8920

1st pic: Driving south on the KH, a few km before Lake Karakul (3640m).

Pics 2,3,4: Lake Karakul (3640m), 18km to the NNW.

Pic 5: 40km to the South along Tagharma River before its confluence (3030m) with Tashikuergan River, where they turn 90° eastward.

Pic 6: 10km further south, along Tashikuergan River, with the Karakoram highway continuing southward for 138 km until the Pakistan - China border on the Khunjerab Pass (4714m).

I'm a sucker for mountain vistas located on the vast Tibetan plateau, including all adjacent provinces and country that share the same elements: 6000-7000m high mountains, which are so often located near very large, endorheic lakes: the result never fails to leave me searching for the right words to convey the surreal beauty of such landscape.

Here's Kula Kangri (7538m), with Lake Pumo Yumtso (5000m) to the northwest.

 

*Picture credits (1 to 4):

- budd liu

- Gelek Choe

- Great Tibet Tour

- Yi Peng*

It was carved during Pleistocene's successive ice ages (-2.58My to -11ky), whenever glaciers advanced souteastward towards the Atlantic, but also during glaciers' retreats: five successive meltwater outburst floods have been identified for the last Wisconsin deglaciation alone: those sudden breaks of glacial lakes stripped the channel's floor clean of its sediments, except where the glaciers carved a deeper depression (≈ -550m), just northwest of the Cabot Strait.

 

Given its width (75-100 km) and depth (300-500 m) for most of its 1400 km run, I wonder if a comparable, underwater "fjord" exists?

Ça c'était à 10 h 33 p.m. ...