„A mule, which had not carried any bagged for the last 10 days, froze. Now I have 27 mules, 27 horses and 27 team members. We have not seen any human beings for 57 days. Whether we should stick together till the moment when we die as the first nomads?” – that’s a quotation of Swedish discoverer Sven Hedin, written in his diary during the Trans-Himalaya expedition through the Chang Tang in 1906-1908. He was equipped with hundreds of animals carrying the essential equipment and surrounded with numerous members of his expedition team.

At the begging of the last century a lot of expeditions tired to cross the plateau with a help of yaks and horses. The Littledale’s team, consisted of 50 people and around 300 loaded animals, tried to conquer the Chang Tang from the north-east part, however they didn’t manage to reach Lhasa. Only 10 animals survived and the team members got extremely exhausted. Sven Hedin also tried to cross this area, but he failed as well.

In the year of 2000 Nadine Saulnier and Janne Corax tried to cross the Altun Shan, in order to reach the plateau from the north, but due to misleading information and Nadine coming down with pneumonia, the journey was abandoned at an early stage. In the year of 2003 the next attempt to cross the Chang Tang was crowned with success.

In 1997 two Germans, Steffan Simmerer and Frank Kauper, using rickshaws appropriately adopted for transporting the food, covered the route leading through the central part of the Chang Tang – from Dongco to the Tura village. Eight years later the same route was covered by Martin Adserballe. In August 1999, Shigeru Kodama with his caravan of 12 mules started his expedition from Karasay village and reached the Oong Muztag BC.