Asia’s long northern wall of Tibet has only two roads
The Kunlun Mountains run more than 3,000 kilometres along the Tibetan Plateau’s northern rim, south of the Tarim Basin. Across that entire length only two highways—219 and 109—cross the chain, leaving most of the “Forefather of Mountains” roadless.
From Tajikistan’s Pamirs the range marches east through southern Xinjiang into Qinghai, fencing the Taklamakan and Gobi. Jade-bearing rivers such as the Karakash drain its flanks. Definitions wander: older maps bundled Altyn Tagh, Qilian, and Qin into a wider Kunlun belt, while modern usage hugs the Tarim’s south side. Altyn-Tagh and its north-eastern continuation, the Qilian Shan, count as its chief northern ranges, with the Min Shan extending it to the south.
Kunlun Goddess Peak at 7,167 metres leads the western crest. Some authorities stretch the range north-west to Kongur Tagh, 7,649 metres, and Muztagh Ata, 7,546 metres, although both belong physically with the Pamirs. In the central Arka Tagh the high points are Ulugh Muztagh at 6,973 metres and Bukadaban Feng at 6,860, while Yuzhu Peak crowns the east. The chain rose as the Cimmerian Plate crashed into Siberia in the Late Triassic, closing the Paleo-Tethys. More than seventy volcanic cones in the Kunlun Volcanic Group reach 5,808 metres yet count as cones, not classic volcanic mountains.
Before it was a map label, Kunlun was the name of a mythical Taoist paradise placed near the source of the Yellow River. The idea took hold in Chinese thought during the Warring States period, 475 to 221 BCE, and the Book of Mountains and Seas calls the hill the seat of the emperor and god of the land. Chinese legend sends Zhou King Mu (976–922 BCE) into a Jade Palace paradise here to meet Xi Wang Mu.
The historian Gu Jiegang split Chinese mythology into a western Kunlun system and an eastern Penglai system, arguing that stories born on the high plateau travelled east and fused with coastal sea lore in Yan, Wu, Qi and Yue.
Source: Kunlun Mountains
