Roam the Himalayas and experience a changing Tibet

Roam the Himalayas and experience a changing Tibet

I'm sitting in a nomadic family's dimly lit yak-fur tent in Ladakh, on the Indian side of the Himalayas. Outside, a few dingy sheep forage for greenery in this cold, barren, moon-like landscape, and large birds of prey circle the air on thermals. As we huddled together by the fire, the old man in the tent handed me a small cup of salty milk tea.

Asimkhan

"There were wolves in the night two days ago," he told me through an interpreter. "I chased them off this time, but they come again and they want to take my sheep. It's happening more and more."

"Everything is getting harder for herdsmen," he added. "Maybe my sons don't want to continue this life. My wife and I are probably the last nomads here."

This is a story I have heard repeatedly in the Himalayas and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Whether due to climate change or calls for a more comfortable life in the cities, political repression or the need for education, life in Tibet and the surrounding Himalayan region is changing rapidly.

I have been trekking in the Himalayas and Tibet for 25 years. During this time, I wrote several guidebooks for the region for Lonely Planet, Rough Guides and Bradt. Every time I travel with a local guide who also acts as an interpreter, I like to spend as much time hiking as possible because it increases the contact with the locals. There is nothing I enjoy more than sitting in a remote teahouse or nomadic tent chatting with people about their lives.

Determining the boundaries of Tibet is a bit difficult. This is because, in a sense, there are several Tibets.

What we generally think of as Tibet today—and what is marked as Tibet on most maps—is the Tibet Autonomous Region. This is the second largest autonomous region or province on the map of contemporary China, and its capital is Lhasa.

Before Communist forces seized control of Tibet in 1950, Tibet was a functionally independent state with larger borders than today. (China called the forcible takeover of Tibet a "peaceful liberation." China said at the time that the new Communist government was reasserting sovereignty over a piece of territory lost after the fall of the Qing Dynasty.)

Before the CCP took over Tibet in 1950, much of what is now China's western mountainous region of Sichuan Province, known as Kham, was politically and culturally part of Tibet. Likewise, China's Qinghai province to the north of the TAR was historically part of Tibet under the name Amdo, although China had controlled it in the 18th century.

There are also places in the Himalayas that are culturally identical to Tibet, although these were never politically—or at least for a long time—belong to Tibet. These places include the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, parts of Nepal (especially Upper Mustang and Dorpa, and some valleys north of the main peaks), and parts of India, especially the long-running border dispute of Latvia. Dark.

Most Tibetans believe in their own traditional Buddhism, and temples and nunneries have long played a central role in Tibetan culture and life.

The spiritual leader of Tibet is the Dalai Lama. Before 1959, the Dalai Lama lived in Lhasa. After the failed uprising in 1959, the Dalai Lama fled Lhasa along with many supporters. He is now based in Dharamsala in northern India, where the entire Tibetan government-in-exile is based.

There are also larger Tibetan exile communities in Nepal and other parts of India, and a smaller Tibetan exile community in Bhutan.

China's control of Tibet has undoubtedly brought much-needed development and higher living standards to the plateau. (In 1959, Tibet was one of the least developed regions in Asia.) But China also brought with it a massive crackdown on Tibetan rights, as well as suppression of Tibetan cultural and religious practices. Mining and damming have also wreaked havoc on the local environment.

Many Tibetans living under Chinese rule have little freedom. Power is dominated by Han officials, often from other parts of China. Reports of human rights violations, violations of religious freedom, and allegations of arbitrary arrests and ill-treatment of political prisoners were widespread. Some Tibetans I know who live in Chinese-controlled Tibetan areas have told me privately that they feel like they are living in a giant prison under endless surveillance .

The Chinese government disputes these claims, saying China has made great efforts to improve Tibet, including ending feudal serfdom in Tibet, greatly reducing poverty and doubling life expectancy. Also under Chinese rule, the region's literacy rate rose from 5 percent in the 1950s to 85 percent today.

As traditional Tibetan life and culture are suppressed in Chinese-controlled areas of Tibet, traditional classic Tibetan culture is often easier to find in culturally Tibetan areas of India, Nepal, and Bhutan.

But even in areas where Tibetan culture has been allowed to flourish, there have been marked changes in recent years.

In the past, many Tibetans lived a semi-nomadic life, moving their livestock, usually yaks, between summer and winter pastures. But today, that way of life is increasingly challenged to ensure that children get the best possible education. The desire to earn a reliable wage in a city or town has also driven many former nomadic families away from the mountains. Other changes have been brought about by more road construction, the ubiquitous ownership of motorcycles, and the ubiquity of cell phones and the Internet.

All of these developments have also brought new ideas and new opportunities, as well as dramatic changes, for better or worse, to traditional ways of life in Tibet and the Himalayas.

Tourism has also played a role in the change in the area. Large-scale hiking and adventure tourism have developed in some areas. While the arrival of thousands of international tourists has brought environmental and social change here, it has also kept many families in the mountains and allowed them to benefit from the surrounding nature and Tibetan culture.

A case in point is a Tibetan nomadic family I met on the grasslands of Kham who partnered with a local guesthouse to offer tourists the opportunity to stay in their traditional yak wool tents and learn about traditional Tibetan nomadic life.

As well as generating much-needed income for their family, this has allowed them to maintain a sense of pride in their traditional way of life and find ways to carry it on to the next generation.