Roof of the World



The Roof of the World or Top of the World is a metaphoric description of the high region in the world, also known as High Asia. The term usually refers to the mountainous interior of Asia, including the Pamirs, the Himalayas, the Tibet, the Tian Shan and the Altai Mountains.

Attested usage

The British explorer John Wood, writing in 1838, described Bam-i-Duniah as a "native expression", and it was generally used for the Pamirs in Victorian times: In 1876 another British traveller, Sir Thomas Edward Gordon, employed it as the title of a book and wrote in Chapter IX:
Older encyclopedias also used "Roof of the World" to describe the Pamirs:
With the awakening of public interest in Tibet, the Pamirs, "since 1875... probably the best explored region in High Asia", went out of the limelight and the description "Roof of the World" has been increasingly applied to Tibet and the Tibetan plateau, and occasionally, esp. in French, even to Mt. Everest, but the traditional use is still alive.