Typical monastery architecture in Tibet

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, known as the "roof of the world," is an area with high altitude and thin oxygen. It has complicated natural conditions including glacier, desert, plateau and grassland.

About 200 million years ago, Himalayas and Qinghai- Tibet Plateau were uplifted by the collision between Eurasian continent and India Sub-continent. From the view of earth science, Qinghai- Tibet Plateau is one of the most interesting regions in the world. 
It is the highest plateau in the world - average altitude 4,500 m (14,763 ft) with a crust thickness of 70km.

It is the front line of Eurasian continent and India Sub-continent, and these two mass of land are still press each other today. 

It has the two highest mountains in the world - Mt. Everest (8,850 m = 29,035 ft) and Mt. K2 ( 8,611 m = 28,250 ft).

It has the largest canyon in the world - Yalung Tsangpu (Brahmaputra) River Great Canyon (depth  5,382 m = 17,657 ft with a total length of 496.3 km. 

It is still geologically active with frequent earthquake, glacier movements, earth heat field and hot waterfall exploring.

It has the largest scale of vertical ecosystem zones - from the highest point on the earth 8,850 m, to the bottom of valley >900 m elevation.

It has numerous glaciers and the originates of many important rivers are here.
It has very unique environment and many unique plants & animals.
Its natural ecosystem has been reserved very well. 

Nomadic peoples in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Living in the region for tens of thousand years, Tibetans have proven to be the best ethnic group adaptable to tableland life. There is not such a unique group anywhere else in the world. Moreover, an estimated six million or seven million Han people from other parts of China also live on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is also richly endowed with uncountable animal and plant species, such as yak and Tibetan antelope.

The expedition to the eastern margin of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau passes through four tectonic units; the Longmenshan thrust belt, the Longmenshan foreland basin, the Xianshuihe strike-slip fault, and the Songpan-Ganzi orogen. 
The route traverses the whole margin and the western part of the Sichuan Basin, starting from the Chengdu plain and ending up at the hinterland of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The region passed through is an important tectonic juncture and transitional belt, with complicated geological environment and with various topography. The main observable contents are divided into four parts:  

1. Recognition of the filling sequence and basin texture, on the basis of observing the stratigraphic units, boundaries, sections, lithology, facies, and palaeontology, etc., of the Mesozoic-Cenozoic foreland basin.  
2. Visiting klippes, nappe structures, and thrusting-napping shear zones (Beichuan—Yingxiu, and Maoxian—Wenchuan shear zones) within the Longmenshan thrust belt, understanding the regional tectonic framework as well as the stratigraphic characteristics, and realizing the basin-mountain pattern, coupling, and dynamics of the orogen and foreland basin.
3. The Xianshuihe strike-slip fault belt, the most important strike-slip fault system in the eastern margin, divides the front thrust belt of the Songpan-Ganzi Orogen into the Longmenshan thrust to the north and the Jingpinshan thrust belt to the south, and the orogen into the Qingchuan block to the to north and the Chuan-Dian block to the south. The strike-slip history has a close relation with that of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau development; and it is the key position to verify that the Plateau is derived from the crust thickening or from the sinistral extrusion by absorbing the northward diapirism of the Indian continent after the collision between the Indian and the Asian continent. In this excursion, strike-slip shear zones, strike-slip granite, small-scale strike-slip and pull-apart basins, active faults, and ancient earthquake sites within the fault belt will be shown, and the time, scale, epoch, pattern, kinematics and dynamics of the fault development will be understood.
4. The Xikang Group and turbidite of Triassic, the rudstone and pillow bassalt of Carboniferous-Permian, the Xiaojin arc structure, metamorphic core complex, gneiss dome, ductile shear zone, progressive methamorphic zone, and multiply deformed superposition occurred in the Songpan-Ganzi orogen will be observed, and their time-and space-distribution, development stages, tectonic setting, genetic mechanism, and ore control characteristics will be presented. 

Qinghai-Tibet railway

You can traveling to Lhasa on the newly built Qinghai-Tibet railway, the highest railroad in the world at 4000 - 6000m asl, offers an awesome experience. It runs through the Qinghai-Tibet plateau mysterious and beautiful land with ever changing and diverse landscapes along its route, desert sand dunes, soaring snowy peaks, boundless pasture, immense grassland, primeval forests and subtropical areas.