Karub Ruins, located in Karub Village, Karub District, Qamdo City, Tibet Autonomous Region, China, is 12 kilometers southeast of Qamdo city, with an altitude of 3,100 meters. It was a primitive village inhabited by people in the Neolithic Age about 5,000 years ago, and the layout of the village was a certain scale.
In Tibetan, Karub means castle. According to legend, in the Yuan Dynasty, a general named Duoda had wanted to conquer the area. Local people built a castle and tried to resist. Afterward, the castle was captured and destroyed finally. However, Karub, as as a village’s name, had been retained ever since. Karub ruins are regarded as one of the three major primitive cultural sites in Tibet (Another two are Qugong culture and Microliths culture in northern Tibet). Therefore, the Karub culture was named after it. It had been excavated in 1978～1979. This was the first excavation of the Neolithic settlement site on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
Things to do at Karub Ruins
The site is extremely large, well preserved, and rich in remains. House site, road, stone wall, stone platform, stone ring, ash pit, and etc were found. The excavations include stone tools, pottery, bone utensils, decorations, as well as carbonized corn and animal bones. It is of great value to study the early history of Tibet and worth visiting by tourists, but transportation is not convenient.
Entrance fee: 100 yuan
Opening hours: 8:00 — 19:00
Address: Karub Village, Karub District, Qamdo city, Tibet Autonomous Region
Transportation: Public transportation is not available. You can take a taxi in Qamdo city, at about 100 yuan.
How to get to Qamdo
There are two major ways for tourists to get to Qamdo. They can either take a flight from other mainland cities that are connected with Qambo or drive from other Tibetan cities to Qamdo.
Flights to Qamdo
The fastest and most comfortable way of traveling to Qamdo is by taking a flight. Travelers can take flights from connecting cities such as Chengdu and Chongqing to Qamdo. The flight only takes about 2 hours. Chengdu and Chongqing operate regular direct flights to Qamdo. There is also a round-trip daily flight from Lhasa to Qamdo, which only takes 1 hour 30 minutes.
Driving to Qamdo
Qamdo is a far and remote area in Eastern Tibet. It is less visited than Shigatse and Lhasa. Driving from Lhasa or Shigatse to Qamdo is a long journey that takes more than 20 hours. Qamdo is about 1,100 km away from Lhasa.
Best time to visit Qamdo
Qamdo has a humid continental climate with the geographical location of mid and low latitude. The climatic conditions in various areas of Qamdo are largely different. Most areas in Qamdo are cold and dry while the southeast area is humid and warm.
Qamdo is 3,500 m above the sea level and it enjoys long hours of sunshine. It receives about 2700 hours of sunshine and 80 – 120 frost-free days per year. The temperature in Qamdo can change surprisingly between day and night and has an annual temperature of 7.6 °C. The rainy season in Qamdo is between May and September with an annual rainfall of about 680 mm. The area has a difficult topography with deep valleys and high mountains, which gives it diverse weather in every ten miles.
The best time to visit Qamdo is between April and May, September and October. The snowy condition during cold November to March, mudslide and landslide caused by heavy rain in July and August during the rainy season usually make many places very different to access especially the places in the valley.
So it is advisable that all travelers visiting Qamdo should go with protective clothes and other materials to protect themselves against harsh weather conditions.
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