Tibet Travel Guide

Tibet is the biggest, highest and the youngest plateau in the world. It claims to be the "Roof of the world" and "The Third Pole". Tibet played host to over 1.71 million tourists in the first 10 months of this year, up 46 percent over the same period. The Himalayan region, with its unique natural landscape, negligible pollution, plenty of scenes in association with Tibetan culture as well as increasingly improved infrastructure for tourism, has become the first choice of many tourists when they decide to travel.

Tibet, province-level administrative region of China, located in a high-mountain area in the southwestern part of the country. It is officially called the Tibet (Chinese Xizang) Autonomous Region (TAR). Tibet covers an area of 1,222,000 sq km (471,800 sq mi). It is bounded on the north by Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Qinghai Province; on the east by Sichuan and Yunnan provinces; on the south by Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), India, Bhutan, and Nepal; and on the west by India. Lhasa is the Tibet capital and largest city. Some Tibetans contend that Tibet includes parts of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan provinces where ethnic Tibetans live. Tibet is largely a plateau averaging c.16,000 ft (4,880 m) in height. Many of the mightiest rivers of E Asia, especially the Chang (Yangtze), the Mekong, and the Thanlwin, rise in Tibet.

Among the 14 peaks above 8,000 meters on earth,5 are in Tibet. Besides Mt. Everst, peaks like Luozi, Makalu,Zhuoayou, Xixiabangma and Nanjiabawa are all competing to stand up higher than other peaks on earth.

The population of the Tibet was 2,620,000 in 2000, yielding an average population density of about 2 persons per sq km (5.2 per sq mi), the lowest of any region in China. The majority of people in Tibet are ethnic Tibetans, and the largest minority are Han Chinese. The indigenous inhabitants are of Mongolian stock and speak a Tibeto-Burman language.