The Tien Shan, or Tian Shan, mountains lie to the north of which?
Tian Shan Shan is north and west of the Taklamakan Desert and directly north of the Tarim Basin in the border region of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Xinjiang in northwest China. In the south it links up with the Pamir Mountains and to north and east it meets the Altai Mountains of Mongolia. In Western cartography such as National Geographic, the eastern end of the Tian Shan is usually understood to be east of Ürümqi, with the range to the east of that city known as the Bogda Shan as part of the Tian Shan. Chinese cartography from the Han Dynasty to the
Tian Shan the 1850s. Glaciers in the Tian Shan Mountains have been rapidly shrinking and have lost 27%, or 5.4 billion tons annually, of its ice mass since 1961 compared to an average of 7% worldwide. It is estimated that by 2050 half of the remaining glaciers will have melted. The Tian Shan have a number of named ranges which are often mentioned separately (all distances are approximate). In China the Tian Shan starts north of Kumul City (Hami) with the U-shaped Barkol Mountains, from about east of Ürümqi. Then the Bogda Shan (god mountains) run from east of Ürümqi. Then there