Travel

Tibet, nestled between the mountain ranges of the Himalayas in the south and the Kunlun Shan in the north, conjures images of blue skies, flapping prayer flags and red-cheeked Tibetan monks. Tibetans have survived for thousands of years in the harshest environments - physical and political. A visit to Tibet is not a walk in the park, but proper preparation combined with a healthy attitude

for the rustic will make any visitor to Tibet fall in love with the place.

Talking about the location of Tibet is a tricky thing to do because one must take politics, history and geography into account. The Tibet that Westerners think about is what is officially known as the Tibetan Autonomous Region (the TAR)  by the Chinese. In Mandarin. it s called or Xizang. pronounced she-zang which means Treasure House of the West. It sits at the far west of China, just south of Xinjiang Autonomous Region. The northern tip of India borders Tibet s western side and Nepal. Bhutan and Myanmar snuggle up to its southern border. To the northeast lies Qinghai Province and to the east lie Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces.

The Tibetan plateau averages about 4,000m (12,000 feet) above sea level. Some of the world s highest mountains surround Tibet: the Himalayas to the south, the Karakoram in the west and the Kunlun in the north. Over 1,500 lakes are scattered throughout Tibet and the mountain waters

give way to several major river systems in Asia: the Brahmaputra (Yarlung Tsangpo ), the Indus and the Mekong (Lancang Jiang ).

Without getting too deep into the very important and interesting history of the region, that my colleagues in Asian History. Buddhism and Chinese Culture do well, it is worth reading my brief article on Greater Tibet and visiting the Tibetan regions that are outside the Chinese-drawn borders of the TAR.