59 Fun Facts About Tibet

Tibet is the highest region on Earth, with an average elevation of roughly how much?

Tibet's average elevation is about 4,380 m, roughly 14,000 feet, which is why the plateau is nicknamed the Roof of the World.

Which mountain, on Tibet's border with Nepal, is the region's highest point?

Mount Everest rises 8,848.86 metres on the Tibet–Nepal border, the height agreed by the 2020 China–Nepal joint survey.

What is Tibet's own name for itself?

Tibetans call their country Bod, pronounced roughly 'Bö'; the name originally meant only the central region before being applied to the whole plateau.

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

A khata is a ceremonial silk scarf, usually white, presented as a greeting or blessing at arrivals, weddings, funerals and audiences with lamas.

Before it became the capital, Lhasa was called Rasa, meaning what?

Goats were used to move earth during construction of the great temple, and the name changed to 'place of gods' afterwards.

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

Songtsen Gampo, reckoned the 33rd king, founded the Tibetan Empire in the early 7th century and is the first of the 'Three Dharma Kings' credited with introducing Buddhism.

Princess Wencheng, who wed the empire's founder in 640, was a niece of which dynasty's emperor?

Princess Wencheng came from the Tang imperial clan; Emperor Taizong sent her to Tibet to seal an alliance with the rising empire, and Tibetans revere her as Gyasa.

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

Chang'an, today's Xi'an, fell to Tibetan forces in 763 after the An Lushan rebellion had stripped China's western garrisons; the occupiers 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 in 842 marks the beginning of the Tibetan Empire's dissolution?

Langdarma, who persecuted Buddhism after taking the throne in 838, was assassinated around 842 by the monk Lhalung Pelgyi Dorje; the succession dispute that followed broke up the empire.

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, founded by Je Tsongkhapa in the early 15th century, is nicknamed the Yellow Hats; his disciples built its great monasteries of Ganden, Drepung and Sera.

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.

On which hill in Lhasa does the Potala Palace stand?

Marpo Ri, the 'Red Hill', rises about 130 metres above the valley floor; the Potala Palace was built on it from 1645 over the ruins of a 7th-century royal palace.

Lhasa's Jokhang temple was built around 640 to house a Buddha statue brought by which queen?

Bhrikuti, a Licchavi princess from the Kathmandu valley, brought the Jowo Mikyo Dorje for which the temple was founded; the statues were later swapped, so Wencheng's Jowo Shakyamuni sits there today.

What is the Barkhor in Lhasa?

The Barkhor is 'A pilgrim circuit and market around the Jokhang': a clockwise kora of roughly a kilometre lined with stalls and marked by four large stone incense burners.

The 14th Dalai Lama was born in 1935 in the village of Taktser in which traditional Tibetan region?

Taktser lies in Amdo, the north-eastern Tibetan region now mostly within Qinghai; the boy born there as Lhamo Thondup was recognised in 1939 and enthroned in 1940.

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

Tenzin Gyatso is the religious name the boy born Lhamo Thondup took as a monk; Tibetans also call him Kundun ('The Presence') and Yizhin Norbu ('The Wish-Fulfilling Gem').

The 14th Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in which year?

The 14th Dalai Lama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989; the committee cited his consistent rejection of violence in the struggle for Tibet.

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.

The 1959 Lhasa uprising began on which date, now observed by exiles as Tibetan Uprising Day?

On 10 March 1959 crowds surrounded the Norbulingka, fearing the Dalai Lama would be seized when he attended a performance at the Chinese military headquarters; exiles mark the date as Tibetan Uprising Day.

Which US agency gave Tibetan fighters training, Nepal camps and aerial supply drops around 1959?

The CIA trained Tibetan guerrillas from 1957, first on Saipan and then at Camp Hale in Colorado, parachuted arms into Tibet and later backed a guerrilla base in northern Nepal.

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.

The province-level region China created to replace the old Tibet Area was established in which year?

The region was formally established on 1 September 1965; it covers over 1.2 million square kilometres, about half of cultural Tibet, at roughly three people per square kilometre.

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

Tashilhunpo, founded in 1447 by Gendun Drup, is the traditional seat of the Panchen Lamas, each held to be an emanation of the buddha Amitābha.

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

Mount Kailash, 6,638 metres high in Ngari, has no recorded ascent; pilgrims of four faiths instead walk the 52-kilometre kora around it.

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

Hindus hold that Shiva sits in eternal meditation on the summit with his consort Parvati, which is why 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 flows through Assam into Bangladesh; on leaving the plateau it carves the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon, more than 5,000 metres deep.

Because so many great Asian 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?

The plateau is called the Third Pole because 'Its ice is the biggest freshwater store outside the poles': tens of thousands of glaciers hold more ice than anywhere beyond the Arctic and Antarctic.

The lake Namtso, at 4,718 metres, lies in which administrative area?

Namtso lies in the Tibet Autonomous Region, about 110 km north of the regional capital; its 4,718-metre surface makes it one of the highest large lakes on Earth.

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 made with tea, butter, water, tsampa and which seasoning?

Salt is what makes Tibetan butter tea savoury rather than sweet; the brew is churned from brick tea, butter and salt, and drinkers may take dozens of small cups a day.

Linnaeus's name for Tibet's shaggy domestic bovine, Bos grunniens, means what?

Grunting ox is the literal sense of Bos grunniens, from Latin grunnire, because the animal grunts rather than lows; the wild form is separately named Bos mutus, 'mute ox'.

Tibetans do not use the Western term 'sky burial'; what do they call the practice?

'Giving alms to the birds', jhator in Tibetan, treats the corpse as an empty vessel and a final act of generosity; frozen ground and scarce fuel also made exposure the practical choice.

The Qinghai–Tibet railway crosses the world's highest rail pass at Tanggula, at roughly what altitude?

More than 960 km of the line sits above 4,000 metres, and the Golmud–Lhasa section opened in 2006 once permafrost problems were solved.

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

Losar falls in February or March, on the first day of the Tibetan lunisolar year; the calendar's era count starts from 127 BCE, the traditional date of the first king.

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 the language of Tibet in which language family?

Tibetan belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family, in its Tibeto-Burman branch alongside Burmese; its script is also used for Dzongkha in Bhutan and for Ladakhi.

Who wrote the first Tibetan-English dictionary and grammar in 1834?

Alexander Csoma de Kőrös, a Transylvanian Hungarian who set out on foot to find the origins of the Magyars, published his Tibetan–English dictionary and grammar in Calcutta in 1834.

Which Mongol prince gained temporal power in Tibet in the 1240s and sponsored Sakya Pandita?

Khuden (Godan), a grandson of Genghis Khan, sent troops into Tibet in 1240 and summoned Sakya Pandita to his court in 1244, beginning Mongol overlordship.

Which of Tibet's three traditional provinces covers the central and western TAR, including Lhasa?

Ü-Tsang, the central heartland around the capital, was the seat of the Dalai Lamas' government; the other two provinces lie to the north-east, now largely in Qinghai, and the south-east.

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

Shigatse, the Panchen Lamas' city on the Yarlung Tsangpo, is Tibet's second city; the Scot George Bogle reached it in 1774 seeking trade for the East India Company.

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

Maroon is the colour of Tibetan monastic robes; the shade, worn by monks of all four major schools, marks Tibetan Buddhism apart from the saffron robes of Southeast Asia.

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

Xizang, the pinyin form of the Chinese name 西藏, began appearing in place of 'Tibet' in Beijing's official English texts in 2023, a change the exile administration has denounced.

Who toppled the Sakya between 1346 and 1354 and founded the Phagmodrupa dynasty?

Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen, the myriarch of Phagmodru in the Yarlung valley, defeated the Sakya administration by 1354 and ruled as Desi, restoring native rule after Mongol-backed Sakya dominance.

What were the resident commissioners the Qing sent to Lhasa from the 18th century called?

In 1750 the Ambans were killed in a Lhasa riot, and Qing troops crushed the rebels the following year.

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 Qing counter-offensive of 1792 drove it back towards Kathmandu and produced the Twenty-Nine Article Ordinance of 1793.

Which general led a Sikh army from Ladakh into western Tibet in 1841, starting the Sino-Sikh War?

Zorawar Singh, the Dogra general serving Gulab Singh of Jammu, marched from Ladakh in May 1841 and was killed in the Purang area that December; the 1842 Treaty of Chushul restored the old frontier.

Which reformist Chinese leader's 1980 visit to Tibet opened a period of liberalisation?

Hu Yaobang, then Party general secretary, toured Tibet in May 1980, apologised for past policies and ordered tax relief and a withdrawal of Han cadres; protests from 1987 reversed the thaw.

Which harvested fungus was estimated to supply about 40% of rural Tibet's cash income?

Ophiocordyceps sinensis, the 'caterpillar fungus' or yartsa gunbu, grows from a buried ghost-moth larva; in the 2000s its harvest was estimated to supply around 40% of rural cash income.

Which Portuguese Jesuit reached the kingdom of Guge in western Tibet in 1624 and built a church?

António de Andrade crossed the Mana Pass from Garhwal in 1624, won the Guge king's favour and opened a church at Tsaparang in 1626; the mission collapsed after Ladakh conquered Guge in the 1630s.

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

Kashmir is the origin the name Kachee (Khache) records: Kashmiri merchants settled in the capital from the 17th century, and after 1959 India recognised their descendants as citizens on that basis.