I am happy to announce that the article about Chinese roads and infrastructure in Aksai Chin is now on the DFI front page.
You have clearly spent lot of time researching this. Thanks for the quality product and I will wait for the follow-up on the Eastern Sector.
A few comments; italicized text is copied from your article and since DFI does not allow me to post URLs I had to hack their prefixes :
1).
The approach road here has been built along the banks of a river called the Kizil Jilga which extends from the LAC right into Chinese held Aksai Chin. : The river is called Chip Chap River. You can see it on "
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/China_India_western_border_88.jpg" as flowing east from DBO.
2). Qizil Jilga was a caravan stop on the Ladakh artery of silk route, located about 6 kms north of the point where Chip Chap flows into the Qaraqash River. It has been in the news about 2 years ago for caravans of a different nature, that I will touch upon next.
3).
The Chinese are known to house missiles and military equipment in mountain tunnels, but the purpose of this tunnel is unclear. : The '
defenceforumindia.com/jh4cz/assets/34.jpg' provided alongside this line is from Saidullah (what the Hans have re-christened as Xiadulla). This along with Qizil Jilga is suspected to be a missile storage facility. News article at '
hindustantimes.com/India-news/NorthIndia/China-creeping-up-in-Ladakh/Article1-766140.aspx'.
4).
As mentioned earlier, to the south of these Chinese positions near DBO, the LAC has no sign of any Chinese roads or infrastructure for a distance of about 100 km. : You may want to check out the co-ordinates (35° 1'31.63"N, 78°14'32.88"E)
on the satellite imagery from Nov 2012. It is a Chinese roadhead (again not all-weather), but a roadhead nevertheless. I do not have the privilege to send private messages or I would have sent you my 2 cents on why I think this road is more important than the one leading to DBO.
A few others that I am not sure I want to post here.
In all, a trailblazing effort; so much that it made me register and post on this site. Look forward to more.