Photo of dam on Indus (Senge Tsangpo)

A friend just sent me a link which has a photo of "The Sengye Tsangpo Hydropower Station." Upon comparing the photo with the dam on Ngari I found on Google Earth last week, it's clear that these are the same dam. According to the text on the photo, the Sengye Tsangpo Hydropower Station has an installed capacity of 6,400 Kilowatts and is now operational. Read more on this article...

Pakistan shocked at Chinese dam on Indus River

I have heard word-of-mouth stories of a Chinese dam on the Tibetan headwaters of Indus River (Senge Khabab, སེང་གེ་ཁ་འབབ་) but never saw anything published about it. A news story from Pakistan confirmed the rumour today. I tried to locate the spot where the dam could be using Tibetan Himalayan Digital Library's handy mapping tool. Unfortunately the satellite imagery is not clear on close-up and the mapping system won't show rivers. So I drew a VERY rough blue line (took me few seconds on PhotoShop) on the map to show Indus headwaters. The dam is located near Ngari (མངའ་རིས་, called "Ali" in Chinese) township, circled in black, in Gar (སྒར་) county in Western Tibet.




I then checked on Google Earth, and guess what, the dam is clearly visible there. See a screen shot of GE image below. The dam is situated at 32 degrees and 31 minutes North latitude, and 80 degrees and 10 minutes East longitude. It is built on a tributary of Indus River, which flows from East to West joining the main (Indus) river at 32 degrees and 31 minutes North latitude, and 79 degrees and 42 minutes East longitude. The "city" on the left of the image is Ngari township.

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