Landscapes from the top

In Xizang's 'miniature Earth', a nature station-turned-micro-museum transforms a quick stop into a nine-zone ecological journey, Yang Feiyue reports.

The warm, humid monsoon winds that sweep up from the Indian Ocean don't stop at the Himalayas. They find their way through the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon, the world's deepest gorge, and pour into the mountains of the southeastern part of the Xizang autonomous region.

They leave behind an extraordinary landscape that compresses several climate zones into just a few dozen kilometers of horizontal distance.