The Tarim, Lop Nur and northern Tibet

Sven Hedin · 1899 CE – 1902 CE · Earth

The Tarim, Lop Nur and northern Tibet — Sven Hedin · 1899 CE – 1902 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Survey the rivers and lakes of the Tarim basin, settle the position of Lop Nur and cross Tibet to Lhasa.

Historical context

Geographers had argued for thirty years about Lop Nur: the Chinese maps put it north of where Przhevalsky had found a lake, and Ferdinand von Richthofen suspected both were right at different dates. Hedin went back with a boat, a plane table and four years, and answered the question by surveying the whole river system that fed it. On the way he pulled a Han garrison town out of the sand, and the documents from it opened the archaeology of the Silk Road.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Kashgar

    1899 CE

    He fits out at the oasis where the Russian and British consuls watch each other across a bazaar.

  2. A ferry built at Lailik

    September 1899

    He has a flat-bottomed boat built on the Yarkand river and casts off with a plane table on his knees.

  3. Down the Tarim

    1900 CE

    Fifteen hundred kilometres of a river that has changed its bed within living memory.

  4. The wandering lake

    1900 CE

    In the reed marshes of the Kara-koshun, Loplik fishermen pole him through channels no map shows.

  5. Loulan out of the sand

    March 1901

    He returns with shovels to a ruined town found the year before by accident.

  6. The lake country

    1901 CE

    South of the Arka Tagh he crosses a plateau of salt lakes that no map had ever carried.

  7. Stopped short of Lhasa

    1901 CE

    Shaven and dressed as a Mongol pilgrim, he is recognised and escorted away from the holy city.

  8. Out at Leh

    1902 CE

    He comes down into Ladakh with three years of survey and a dead caravan behind him.

Outcome

Mapped the Tarim from a boat, found and excavated Loulan, was turned back short of Lhasa and came out at Leh in 1902.

Sven Hedin

Swedish geographer and draughtsman who drifted the length of the Tarim, discovered the buried city of Loulan and mapped northern Tibet, and whose later politics wrecked his name.

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Sources

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