58 Fun Facts About Tibet

Tibet's plateau was pushed up when which tectonic plate drove north into Eurasia?

The Indian Plate began ramming into Eurasia roughly 50 million years ago and is still pushing north, which is why Tibet stands at an average of more than 4,000 metres.

Which Himalayan peak on Tibet's southern border do Tibetans know as Chomolungma?

Mount Everest is Chomolungma in Tibetan; the first British attempts of the 1920s all climbed from the Tibetan side, because Nepal was then closed to foreigners.

What is Tibet's own name for itself?

Bod, pronounced roughly 'Bö', is what Tibetans call their land; the English name 'Tibet' is said to come from outsiders' versions of the name, such as the Arabic Tubbat.

What is the ceremonial white silk scarf offered as a greeting in Tibet called?

Khata scarves are usually white, which Tibetans commonly read as the giver's pure heart; one is offered to welcome a guest, honour a lama or wish a traveller a safe journey.

Lhasa, once called Rasa or 'goats' place', has a name meaning the place of what?

Gods: Lhasa means 'place of the gods'; the older name is tied to a legend that goats carried the earth used to fill in a lake where the city's great temple was built.

Who was the 33rd king of Tibet and founder of the Tibetan Empire in the 7th century?

Songtsen Gampo unified the Tibetan Plateau and moved his court from the Yarlung valley to the site of Lhasa, where he is said to have built Buddhist temples.

Princess Wencheng, sent to marry the empire's founder, came from which Chinese dynasty's imperial clan?

The Tang emperor Taizong at first refused the match; he sent Princess Wencheng, a distant relative, only after Tibetan forces attacked the frontier town of Songzhou.

In late 763, Tibetan troops occupied which Chinese capital for fifteen days?

Chang'an, today's Xi'an, fell while China was still reeling from the An Lushan rebellion; the Tibetans installed a puppet emperor and withdrew after about fifteen days.

The 821-823 peace treaty between Tibet and China was inscribed on a pillar outside which Lhasa temple?

The 821–823 treaty pillar stands outside the Jokhang; its bilingual Tibetan–Chinese text fixed the frontier and swore lasting peace between the two empires.

Which king's assassination around 842 began the break-up of the Tibetan Empire?

Langdarma, remembered for persecuting Buddhism, is said to have been killed by the monk Lhalung Pelgyi Dorje; the civil war that followed broke the empire apart.

Tibetan tradition credits which 7th-century minister with creating the Tibetan script?

Thonmi Sambhota, a minister sent to India in the 7th century, is traditionally credited with devising the Tibetan alphabet from an Indian Gupta-type script, though the earliest Tibetan annals never mention him.

The word 'Dalai' in Dalai Lama comes from Mongolian and means what?

'Dalai' is Mongolian for Ocean, the title Altan Khan bestowed on Sonam Gyatso in 1578; 'Gyatso', the Tibetan element of his name, also means ocean.

Sonam Gyatso, the first to receive the title in 1578, is counted as which Dalai Lama?

The 3rd Dalai Lama is how Sonam Gyatso is counted: the title was applied posthumously to his two predecessors in the lineage, Gendun Drup and Gendun Gyatso.

The Dalai Lamas belong to which school of Tibetan Buddhism, also known as the Yellow Hats?

The Gelug school grew from the reforms of Je Tsongkhapa, who founded Ganden monastery himself; two of his disciples then founded Drepung and Sera, completing its three great seats near Lhasa.

Which Dalai Lama, 'the Great', unified central Tibet and ordered the Potala Palace built?

The 5th Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso, took power in 1642 with Mongol backing after defeating the Tsangpa ruler, and began the Potala Palace in 1645.

The Potala Palace is named after Mount Potalaka, the mythical abode of which bodhisattva?

Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, is said to dwell on Mount Potalaka; the Dalai Lamas are regarded as his emanations, so their palace took the name.

Tradition says Lhasa's most sacred temple was built for a Buddha statue brought by which queen from the Kathmandu valley?

Bhrikuti is said to have brought the statue the temple was built for; the images were later swapped, so the Buddha brought by the Chinese princess Wencheng sits there today.

What is the Barkhor in Lhasa?

A pilgrim circuit and market street: the Barkhor rings the old city's holiest temple for about a kilometre, and pilgrims walk it clockwise, some prostrating at every step.

The 14th Dalai Lama was born in Taktser, a village in which north-eastern region of traditional Tibet?

Amdo is where a search party found the two-year-old Lhamo Thondup, who is said to have picked out the late Dalai Lama's belongings, saying 'It's mine'; he was enthroned in Lhasa in 1940.

What is the 14th Dalai Lama's religious name?

Tenzin Gyatso is the name the boy born Lhamo Thondup took as a monk; in 2011 he gave up the political role Dalai Lamas had held for centuries, handing it to an elected exile leader.

The Dalai Lama's 1989 Nobel Peace Prize was called a tribute to whom?

Mahatma Gandhi never received the prize, an omission later committee members publicly regretted; in 1989 its chairman called the Dalai Lama's award in part a tribute to Gandhi's memory.

The Dalai Lama's government-in-exile is based in which Indian hill town?

The exile administration sits in Dharamshala (McLeod Ganj) in Himachal Pradesh; it was first set up at Mussoorie in April 1959 and moved there in 1960.

Tibetan exiles mark 10 March as the anniversary of which event?

The 1959 Lhasa uprising began when crowds ringed the Norbulingka palace, fearing the Dalai Lama would be seized at a show in the Chinese army camp; days later he fled to India.

Around 1960 the CIA secretly trained Tibetan guerrillas at Camp Hale, high in which US state?

Colorado's Camp Hale, a wartime ski-troop base about 2,800 metres up in the Rockies, was picked because its terrain and thin air resembled Tibet; trainees were later parachuted home.

What is the 1951 document under which China annexed Central Tibet called?

The Seventeen Point Agreement was signed in Beijing on 23 May 1951, months after the PLA had overrun Tibet's eastern garrison; the Dalai Lama repudiated it when he fled in 1959.

Which British officer led the 1904 expedition into Tibet and negotiated the resulting convention?

Francis Younghusband led the 1903–04 mission; after the massacre at Chumik Shenko it marched on to the capital, where he dictated the resulting convention in September 1904.

Tibet is China's second-largest province-level region by size, behind which one?

Xinjiang alone is bigger: Tibet's autonomous region, created in 1965, covers about 1.2 million square kilometres, yet the 2020 census counted only about 3.6 million people there.

The Panchen Lama, second in spiritual authority to the Dalai Lama, traditionally heads which monastery?

Tashilhunpo's abbots held the title Panchen, 'great scholar'; in the 17th century a Dalai Lama declared that his tutor, then its abbot, would be reborn, starting the line.

Which mountain in western Tibet is sacred to Buddhists, Hindus, Jains and followers of Bön alike?

Mount Kailash has no recorded ascent: climbing is barred out of respect for its sanctity, so pilgrims of four faiths walk a circuit around its base instead, some prostrating the whole way.

Hindus regard the sacred peak Tibetans call Gang Rinpoche as the home of which god?

Hindus hold that Shiva dwells on the summit with his consort Parvati, one reason the peak is treated as too holy to climb.

The Yarlung Tsangpo, the highest major river in the world, becomes which river once it reaches Assam?

As the Brahmaputra it reaches the Bay of Bengal, but the link was long unproven: in 1880 the explorer Kinthup was sent to float marked logs down the Tsangpo to test it.

Because so many great rivers rise there, Tibet has been called what?

The Water Tower of Asia: the Yangtze, Yellow River, Mekong, Salween, Indus and Yarlung Tsangpo all rise on the plateau, feeding well over a billion people downstream.

The Tibetan Plateau is sometimes called the 'Third Pole' because of what?

Its vast store of glacier ice: the plateau's glaciers and snowfields hold more frozen water than anywhere outside the Arctic and Antarctic, and their meltwater feeds rivers that over a billion people rely on.

Which freshwater lake in western Tibet is sacred to Hindus, who trace it to the mind of Brahma?

Lake Manasarovar, in Hindu tradition, was first formed in the mind of the god Brahma; pilgrims of several faiths still come to bathe in it or walk around its shore.

What is tsampa, the Tibetan staple?

Roasted barley flour is what tsampa is: the grain is toasted before milling, so it needs no further cooking and is kneaded with butter tea into a dough.

Traditional Tibetan butter tea is churned from tea, butter, water and which seasoning?

Salt makes Tibetan butter tea savoury rather than sweet; the brew is churned with yak butter, and tsampa is often stirred or dipped into the cup.

In Tibetan, the word 'yak' strictly refers only to which animals of the species?

Males only: the Tibetan g-yag names the bull, while the cow is a dri or nak, so 'yak milk' is, strictly speaking, a contradiction.

The Tibetan name for sky burial, jhator, is commonly translated as what?

'Giving alms to the birds' is the usual gloss, though the name literally means 'bird-scattered'; the body is seen as an empty vessel, and hard ground and scarce fuel made burial and cremation impractical.

Builders of the Qinghai–Tibet railway, the world's highest, had to lay long stretches of track across what unstable ground?

Permafrost can thaw and buckle the track, so the Golmud–Lhasa section waited until engineers found ways to keep the ground frozen, such as raised beds of loose rock; it opened in 2006.

Losar, the Tibetan New Year, falls in which months?

Losar falls in February or March, on the first day of the Tibetan lunisolar year; two days earlier families share guthuk soup, then carry torches and shout to drive out the old year's evil spirits.

Which mantra is most commonly inscribed on Tibetan prayer wheels?

Om mani padme hum, the six-syllable mantra of the bodhisattva of compassion, fills the paper rolls inside prayer wheels; each turn is held to equal reciting every copy aloud.

Tibet's exile flag, adopted by the 13th Dalai Lama in 1916, is nicknamed after which mythical creatures on it?

The two Snow lions on the flag hold up the flaming three jewels of Buddhism, and the six red rays stand for Tibet's six original ancestral tribes.

Which Austrian mountaineer wrote Seven Years in Tibet after befriending the young Dalai Lama?

Heinrich Harrer escaped a British internment camp in India in 1944, reached the Tibetan capital in 1946 and tutored the teenage Dalai Lama; Brad Pitt played him in the 1997 film.

Linguists place Tibetan in the same language family as which of these languages?

Mandarin and Tibetan both belong to the Sino-Tibetan family, as does Burmese, even though Tibetan is written in a script modelled on Indian ones.

Alexander Csoma de Kőrös, compiler of the first Tibetan–English dictionary, went east seeking which people's origins?

The Hungarians: Csoma set off for Asia hoping to find his people's ancestral home, and instead spent years studying with lamas in Himalayan monasteries to produce the dictionary.

Which Mongol ruler made the Sakya lama Phagpa his imperial preceptor and nominal head of Tibet?

Kublai Khan took Phagpa as his religious teacher and set him over Tibet, building on a bond begun when Phagpa's uncle Sakya Pandita submitted to the Mongol prince Godan in the 1240s.

Which of Tibet's three traditional provinces is the central one, containing Lhasa?

Ü-Tsang joins two older regions, Ü around Lhasa and Tsang to its west, whose rulers were rivals until Tsang's king was defeated in 1642; the other two provinces lie to the east and north-east.

What is the second-largest city in Tibet, west of Lhasa?

Shigatse, the Panchen Lamas' city, is Tibet's second city; the Scot George Bogle, sent in 1774 to open trade for the East India Company, was received there by the Panchen Lama.

What colour are the robes traditionally worn by Tibetan Buddhist monks?

Maroon robes set Tibetan monks apart from Southeast Asia's saffron ones, but both descend from rags: the first Buddhist monks stitched their robes from discarded cloth.

In 2023 Chinese official English documents began calling Tibet by which pinyin name?

Xizang is the pinyin spelling of the region's Chinese name; when Paris's Musée du quai Branly used it on labels in 2024, Tibetan protests won an apology and a promise to restore 'Tibet'.

Which Indian tantric master, revered as Guru Rinpoche, is said to have helped found Samye, Tibet's first monastery?

Padmasambhava is said to have subdued the demons that were blocking Samye's construction, and the Nyingma school, Tibet's oldest, traces its teachings to him.

The ambans, resident commissioners posted to Lhasa from the 1720s, served which Chinese dynasty?

The Qing dynasty kept ambans in Lhasa until it fell in 1912; when a mob killed both of them in 1750, Qing officials arrived the following year and executed the riot's leaders.

Which invaders did the Qianlong Emperor's army push out of Tibet in 1792?

The Nepalese (Gurkha) army had sacked the Panchen Lama's monastery in 1791; the imperial counter-offensive of 1792 chased it almost to Kathmandu before the two sides made peace.

The Dogra general who invaded western Tibet in 1841 was serving which empire?

The Sikh Empire: Zorawar Singh served Gulab Singh, whose kingdom of Jammu was its tributary. He took Taklakot, but his army was destroyed that winter and he was killed in December 1841.

Which reformist leader, whose death sparked the Tiananmen Square protests, toured Tibet in 1980 and relaxed Chinese policy there?

Hu Yaobang, newly made the party's general secretary, toured Tibet in May 1980, was dismayed by the conditions he found and ordered thousands of Han cadres withdrawn; protests from 1987 hardened policy again.

Which fungus, prized in Chinese medicine, set off a modern gold rush among rural Tibetans?

Caterpillar fungus, yartsa gunbu or 'summer grass, winter worm', kills a moth caterpillar underground and sprouts from its head; dug out by hand, it has sold for more than its weight in gold.

A 1620s mission that built a church at Tsaparang, in western Tibet's kingdom of Guge, was run by which Catholic order?

The Jesuits: António de Andrade crossed the mountains from India in 1624 with a party of Hindu pilgrims, won the king of Guge's favour and built a church at his capital; the mission withered after the kingdom was conquered in 1630.

Tibet's small urban Muslim communities, the Kachee, trace their name to which region?

Kashmir gave the Kachee, or Khache, their name: many descend from Kashmiri merchants who settled in Tibet. Citing that ancestry, they claimed Indian citizenship in 1959, and India accepted them as its nationals.