River
Yurungkax He
450 km from source to mouth · China.
ChinaFlows into Hotan River
In numbers
Length
450km
Average flow
2.3m³/s
Basin
14,575km²
Drop
3,720m
from 4,929 m to 1,209 m
Country
1
The journey
From source to mouth
450 km of river and 4 stops on the way: 4 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmKarakorumat 4,929 m
- 312 kmGujangbagh408,894 people
- 328 kmYing'airike10,253 people
- 363 kmHan’airike43,751 people
- 371 kmYisilamu'awati19,828 people
- 450 kmHotan Riverat 1,209 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
River in People's Republic of China
At the mouth it carries 2.3 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 1,073 seconds. It drops from 4,929 m to 1,209 m, 8.3 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 14,575 km², about the size of TL. 520,000 people live in it. Highest water: from July to August; lowest: from November to February. No large dam holds it back: it is one of the world's free-flowing rivers.
Where to start
- GujangbaghLargest city on its banks · 408,894 people
- Hotan Airport (HTN)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 10 km from the city
- From May to SeptemberThe best months to visit
Yurungkax He, month by month
Highest water: from July to August
Lowest water: from November to February. Freezing months (average below −4 °C): from December to February. Best months to visit: from May to September.
From about 0.3 m³/s in the lowest month to 8.8 m³/s in the highest. An estimate: the monthly flow is modelled from the lowest and highest months of WaterGAP (RiverATLAS, 1971–2000) and the rain and snow along the river (WorldClim). Dams change the real rhythm. The chip is the average air temperature; below it, the month's rain.
Plan the trip
Plan the trip: boat trips, a bed by the river, a car
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The basin
Yurungkax He: the basin in numbers
18,639 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 520,000people live in the basin
- 28/km²people per km²
- 4,005maverage altitude of the basin
- 46mmof rain a year (basin average)
- -1.3°Caverage air temperature
- 0.1%covered by lakes
- 18%glaciers
- 50%permafrost
What covers the basin
- 4% Forest
- 2% Cropland
- 21% Pasture
- 2% Towns and cities
- 18% Ice
RiverATLAS (HydroATLAS v1.0, CC BY 4.0): land cover, people, protected areas, glaciers and dams over the whole basin upstream of the mouth.
Along the river
Yurungkax He: what you find on the way
From OpenStreetMap, within 2.0 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
From space
The source and the mouth, seen from orbit


Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 by EOX IT Services GmbH (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016), CC BY 4.0. The glowing line is the river as drawn by RiverATLAS.
Photos
Yurungkax He in pictures
Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
It flows into
Hotan RiverWhere these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q2339502) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Course, profile, basin | RiverATLAS v1.0 (HydroATLAS, Linke et al. 2019) · CC BY 4.0 — followed from the source to the mouth given by Wikidata |
| Flow | WaterGAP (RiverATLAS), 1971–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Climate along the river | WorldClim (RiverATLAS), 1970–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Towns, bridges, dams | Wikidata · CC0; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0 |
| Along the river | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
Every source and licence is on the data sources page.
The family
Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers or canyons?
Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, month by month, in seven languages.


