First Central Asian expedition

Nikolai Przhevalsky · 1870 CE – 1873 CE · Earth

First Central Asian expedition — Nikolai Przhevalsky · 1870 CE – 1873 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Cross Mongolia to Peking, then reach the northern bend of the Yellow River, the Ordos and Lake Koko Nor, surveying the route and collecting plants and animals throughout; the Geographical Society also wanted light on current events in the Muslim-held north-west of China.

Historical context

Inner Asia in 1870 lay between the Russian and Qing empires, crossed by caravans but never surveyed; Przhevalsky called it as little explored as Central Africa or the interior of Australia. A Muslim rising, begun in Gansu in 1862, had loosened the Qing hold on the north-west and closed the road from Urga to Lhasa. The Geographical Society, seconded by the War Ministry, sent a young staff officer with a Chinese passport, one companion, two Cossacks and a few hundred pounds a year, to reach the Ordos and Koko Nor, and, in the Society’s own words as the historian Daniel Brower quotes them, to throw light on the current events in the centre of China.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Leaving Kyakhta

    29 November 1870

    On 29 November 1870, by the Western calendar, two officers and a Buryat Cossack leave the tea town on the Mongolian border in a cart drawn by a camel.

  2. Urga

    December 1870

    A week out of Kyakhta the cart reaches the monastery city of the Kutukhtu, whose throne stands empty that winter.

  3. The first Gobi crossing

    January 1871

    Some five weeks after Kyakhta, winter marches across the Gobi bring the party down to Kalgan, at a gate of the Great Wall, early in January 1871.

  4. The Ordos loop

    1871 CE

    He follows the Yellow River round its great northern bend, sand on one side, flood plain on the other.

  5. The princes of the Alashan

    26 September 1871

    On 26 September 1871 the prince of the Alashan welcomes the Russians to his walled town; short of money, they must then go all the way back to Kalgan.

  6. Koko Nor

    24 October 1872

    On 24 October 1872 the party comes down onto the steppes of the great blue salt lake, the goal Przhevalsky had set himself.

  7. The upper Yangtze

    22 January 1873

    On 22 January 1873, past the Tsaidam and across the high desert, he reaches the headwater river the Tibetans call the Dre Chu, and can go no further.

  8. Back to Kyakhta

    1 October 1873

    On 1 October 1873, after some 11,800 kilometres, the four men come back across the border.

Outcome

Travelled 11,100 versts, some 11,800 kilometres, in nearly three years, 5,300 of them surveyed by compass; crossed the Ordos, the Alashan, Gansu, Koko Nor and the Tsaidam, and reached the upper Yangtze on 22 January 1873 before turning back for want of money and camels; brought home 1,000 birds, 130 mammal skins and some 4,000 plant specimens.

Nikolai Przhevalsky

Russian officer and naturalist whose four journeys into Inner Asia, between 1870 and 1885, mapped the Gobi, the Tsaidam and northern Tibet and brought back thousands of specimens from a country he called as little explored as Central Africa.

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Sources

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