Tibetan Plateau: - It is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central, South, and East Asia covering most of the Tibet Autonomous Region, most of Qinghai, western half of Sichuan, Southern Gansu provinces in Western China, southern Xinjiang, Bhutan, the Indian regions of Ladakh and Lahaul and Spiti as well as Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan, northwestern Nepal, eastern Tajikistan and southern Kyrgyzstan.
- It stretches approximately 1,000 km. north to south and 2,500 km. east to west.
- It is the world's highest and largest plateau above sea level.
- It is surrounded by imposing mountain ranges that harbor the world's two highest summits, Mount Everest and K2, the Tibetan Plateau is often referred to as "the Roof of the World".
- It contains the headwaters of drainage basins of Yellow, Yangtze, and Mekong rivers.
- Its thousands of glaciers serve as a "water tower" storing water and maintaining flow.
- It is sometimes termed the Third Pole because its ice fields contain the largest reserve of freshwater outside the polar regions.
- It is bordered to the south by the inner Himalayan range, to the north by the Kunlun Mountains and to the northeast by the Qilian Mountains.
- To the east and southeast the plateau gives way to the forested gorge and ridge geography of the mountainous headwaters of the Salween, Mekong, and Yangtze rivers.
- In the west, the curve of the rugged Karakoram range of northern Kashmir embraces the plateau.
- The Indus River originates in the western Tibetan Plateau in the vicinity of Lake Manasarovar.
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