45th Parallel North - Asia

Asia

Continuing west, the parallel passes over vast stretches of the North Pacific Ocean before passing through Rishiri-Rebun-Sarobetsu National Park and the adjacent town of Horonobe on the northern tip of Hokkaidō, the northernmost of Japan's main islands. It continues through the northern part of the Sea of Japan, entering the Asian mainland on the coast of Primorsky Krai in Russia, north of Vladivostok.

At Khanka Lake it enters northeastern China, cutting across Heilongjiang and continuing through part of Jilin and eastern Inner Mongolia. Transecting southern Mongolia it passes through the provinces of Sükhbaatar, Dornogovi (and its capital Sainshand), Dundgovi, Övörkhangai, Bayankhongor, Govi-Altai, and Khovd. In northwestern China it passes through the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang and the oil city of Karamay.

The parallel passes through southern Kazakhstan, intersecting the city of Burylbaytal at the southern tip of Lake Balkhash and the city of Qyzylorda further west. At the border with Uzbekistan it bisects the Aral Sea and its toxic Vozrozhdeniya Island peninsula, site of an abandoned Soviet bioweapons laboratory. It skirts the northern edge of the Ustyurt Plateau, entering back into Kazakhstan before cutting across the northern tip of the Caspian Sea and into Europe and Russia.