Lebu Valley Official Route 勒布沟正规开放线路

About Lebu Valley Official Route

What makes the gorge unusual is the drop. The commission classes it as a mountain-type semi-humid warm temperate monsoon zone and calls it one of the most typical vertical climate belts on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau: from the cold roof of the world down to a humid subtropical area within half an hour's driving. Because the ground is low and the forest dense, it adds, the oxygen content of the air here exceeds that of low-lying inland districts. The primeval forest in the gorge is put at 360,000 mu (36万亩), with more than 140 original ecological species counted, among them the nationally first-class protected plant 红豆杉, the yew. Deep in that forest the commission names state key class I and class II protected animals — leopard, snow leopard, red panda, rhesus macaque, Tibetan snowcock — and says Bengal tigers occasionally come through.

The gorge is an area of concentrated Monba settlement, and the commission places it within Monyul (门隅), the region where the Sixth Dalai Lama Tsangyang Gyatso was born, at 宇松, and where the Tibetan opera 卓娃桑姆 originated. Its physical features include waterfalls, caves and many kinds of natural traces on the rock faces; the commission singles out long-standing rock murals whose figures it calls lifelike, and says that 色木扎 among these places is called a holy mountain by religious circles and draws about 5,000 visitors a year to worship and sightsee. The centre of the gorge is 40 kilometres from the Cona county town.

Mama Monba Ethnic Township, inside the gorge, is the subject of a 2020 Tibet Daily feature by Yuan Haixia and Zheng Lu carried by the regional Department of Culture and Tourism. It records the township as a national key rural-tourism village, an eco-civilisation moderately-prosperous model village, a model site for beautiful-countryside construction, a Monba culture display area and a characteristic eco-tourism small town, and attributes its gentler climate and its green, well-watered, densely wooded look to the comparatively low elevation. On the buildings it is specific: traditional Monba dwellings follow the slope, are built of stone laid up to the roof with mud mortar filling the joints, and mostly run to three storeys — hay and straw at the top, livestock at the bottom, living quarters between — solid and durable, the article says, but not very comfortable. Some of these survive, though most villagers have moved into more modern houses.

The gorge also carries a military site. The county commission's page records that in October 1962 a large-scale armed incursion was launched against China on the Sino-Indian border, that Lebu Gorge on the Cona frontier was the main battlefield of what it calls the counter-attack in self-defence and the place where the first shot was fired, and that the site of the 1962 command post remains open to visitors. On grading, the county commission's 2019 page heads the section 勒布沟国家AAA级景区、自治区风景名胜区, while an announcement of 24 December 2023, reported on a Tibet government site, approved the 勒布沟景区 in Cona as one of two new autonomous-region-level tourism resorts, alongside the Quzika scenic area in Markam County, Qamdo. No cited source sets out an 'officially open route' through the gorge, or states which of its places a visitor may enter.

What to look for

• The vertical descent itself — the county commission has the gorge fall from the cold high plateau to a humid subtropical zone within half an hour's driving
• The primeval forest, put at 360,000 mu, with more than 140 original ecological species including the protected yew 红豆杉
• The rock murals on the gorge's stone faces, which the commission calls long-standing and their figures lifelike
• 色木扎, called a holy mountain by religious circles, which the commission says draws about 5,000 visitors a year
• Traditional Monba houses at Mama Monba Ethnic Township — stone-built, following the slope, with livestock below, living quarters in the middle and fodder above
• The site of the 1962 command post, which the county commission says remains open to visitors

Location & getting there

Getting to Lebu Valley Official Route

Confirm the visitor entrance and which boat or walking routes operate on your date. Rainfall, water levels and weather can change access.

• Search for 勒布沟正规开放线路 with 山南市 and 错那市.