Space pictures of Nepal, Tibet and the Himalaya

Annapurna Sanctuary and Tilicho lake

"Image courtesy of Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center." See http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov, Part of picture STS 055-152a-104, adaption Andrees de Ruiter www.nepal-dia.de

The mountains round of the Annapurna Sanctuary form nearly a closed horseshoe. A similar horseshoe is found in the east of the Annapurna range formed by the Annapurna north face, tilicho peak and Nilgiri . It is drained by the miristi khola. It is from this valley that in 1950 the french expedition leaded by Maurice Herzog climbed the Annapurna 1 from the north side ( climber Herzog and Lachenal). It was the first 8000m peak beeing climbed. Both climber had several frozen fingers and toes.
Below the tilicho peak is the tilicho lake at an evelation of 5000 m, from there one can cross either by the mesokanto la or by the new tilicho tourist la into the valley of the Kali Gandaki.

The Annapurna Base camp is build on the south moraine of the main annapurna glacier .

Please watch also the steep eastern slopes of the Hiunchuli. You can not see them from the bottom of the valley. But in march and april the warm spring sun is warming up the snow lying there which is coming down as avalanches in narrow couloirs. That is the reason that one should cross the part between deorali and MBC as early as possible in the morning and never rest on the “cosy” snowfields which are in fact just remnant from former avalanches.

"Image courtesy of Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center." See http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov, Part of Picture STS 098, adaption Andrees de Ruiter www.nepal-dia.de

On this picture of Annapurna sanctuary one can clearly see the horseshoe

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These pictures are kindly provided by the Nasa Johnson space center and you can download free more than 40000  of them. I myself made the  selection, some adaptions and added names. Feel free to add them to your own hompage, but please add the credit as mentioned below of each picture.