Semo La summit

Trucks descending from Semo La

The Semo La road. The small piles of stones that can be seen by the roadside are used to maintain the road in motorable condition.

Semo La (La means "pass" in Tibetan, the local language) is situated in the central part of Tibet and gives access to the Chang Tang region. The pass is motorable rising to an altitude of 5565m (18,258 feet) at 30°06′36″N, 85°25′54″E. It is found on the so-called Northern Route, north of Raka and south of Coqen in Central Tibet. Travellers use this route as an alternative access route to western Tibet and Mount Kailash, especially when mud makes access by the more southern route difficult. The Tibetan language is typically classified as member of the Tibeto-Burman which in turn is thought by some to be a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. ... Tibet (older spelling Thibet; Tibetan: བོད་, Bod, pronounced pö in Lhasa dialect; Chinese: 西藏, pinyin: XÄ«zàng or 藏区 ZàngqÅ« [the two names are used with different connotations; see Names section below]) is a region in Central Asia and the home of the Tibetan people. ... Mount Kailash (also Mount Kailas, Kailasa or Kangrinbogê Feng 30. ...

The road is an old unsurfaced track travelled only by a weekly bus and trucks heading west to avoid the boggy parts of the south of the country. The road presents few problems for climbing by mountain bike. There are no crossing rivers or dangerous steps. The road is dirt, not paved, but it is wide. Its status as a historically important communications route means that it is at least minimally maintained by a group of workers.

At 5565m, Semo La may be the highest vehicle-accessible pass in the world. It is the highest that has been measured accurately. Khardung La, up to now thought to be the world record holder at 5602m, in reality, according to modern surveys, measures 5359m, 243m less than previously thought. There are other passes that may be higher but have yet to be surveyed properly and may not reasonably be considered "motorable". Khardung La (5602m) is highest known motorable pass in the world. ...

Elevation

The height of 5565m was calculated in 2005 by a team of Catalan researchers conducting a modern GPS survey and is supported by a document supplied by the Cartographic Institute of Catalonia. It accurately matches NASA SRTM data and is consistent with GPS measurements shown here. NASA Logo Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-09-01, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) is a research effort that obtained elevation data on a near-global scale to generate the most complete high-resolution digital topographic database of Earth to date. ... Over fifty GPS satellites such as this NAVSTAR have been launched since 1978. ...

External links

• Summary of the Catalan expedition
• More information about the Catalan expedition
• Document supplied by the Catalan Institute of Cartography
• Local SRTM data
• Satellite image from Google Earth, showing the road