Tibet

Before Japanese manga or larger-than-life Marvel comics held sway over urban Indian readers, there was Tintin. A Belgian postage stamp circa 2014 featuring Tintin. (Catwalker/Shutterstock) An investigative reporter with a Belgian newspaper called Le Vingtième Siècle (The Twentieth Century), the comic book protagonist, with a distinctive quiff and dressed in plus-sized pants, travels the world accompanied by Snowy, his white fox terrier. Discover the thrill of cricket like never before, exclusively on HT.…

A massive collision between the Indian tectonic plate and the Eurasian tectonic plate is causing the Himalayas to grow, but new research suggests it might also be ripping Tibet apart.According to new findings shared at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, data shows that a collision between two major tectonic plates may be having some unforeseen consequences for Tibet. While we already knew that the Himalayas were growing, these new findings suggest that Tibet will be split apart in the process.…

The world’s largest ultra-high-altitude wind farm came online on January 1 in Tibet, or what China now refers to as the Xizang Autonomous Region. The 100-megawatt (MW) wind farm is at an altitude of 4,650 meters (15,256 feet) in the Seni District. A wind farm built at 3,500 (11,483 feet) to 5,500 feet (18,045 feet) is considered ultra-high. Its developer, CHN Energy, will use the wind farm for R&D to further develop large-scale ultra-high-altitude wind farms. But in the meantime, this wind…

This year, three works of literary fiction stood out for me as both, a research scholar and a reader of migrant narratives – the Booker Prize-shortlisted If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama, and Now You See Us by Balli Kaur Jaswal. All three narratives spoke to different histories of conflict and migration with the authors’ own subject positions informing the politics and the poetics of these works. Through interconnected short stories, Escoffery’s nuanced…

The film-makers behind this Dalai Lama documentary must be cursing the timing of its release, just after that video sullied his godlike status as hero of world peace and symbol of Tibet’s resistance against China. Narrated with dignified gravitas by Hugh Bonneville, its selling point is an interview with the Dalai Lama, speaking on film for the first time about his escape from Tibet in 1959, aged 23. Though to be honest, describing the encounter as an interview is pushing it. These days, what you get with the rock star…

Tsering Yangzom Lama’s exceptional debut novel We Measure The Earth With Our Bodies opens in a village at the border of western Tibet and Nepal. Soon after the Dalai Lama escaped to India, the members of the village decide to leave. Chinese soldiers were clamping down on not only protests but also their way of life. “They will not be satisfied with our land alone. They want to possess our minds,” they said. They recounted an ancient Tibetan prophecy: “When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels, the People of…

This was originally meant to be a “comedy of manners” about the Tibetan community in Toronto. How then did it take its present shape? As I began to write about the characters’ present reality, I found myself thinking about everything that had brought them to the West. How did they get there? Where are their families? What are the historical forces impacting them? Even a tiny bit of digging into their recent histories revealed that the story really began when Tibet was invaded and our exile began. Thus, I had to broaden…

Climate-driven changes in the Amazon basin have knock-on effects on Tibetan Plateau 20,000 kilometers (12,500 miles) away, scientists say. Climate extremes in the Amazon rainforest are directly affecting those in the Tibetan Plateau, scientists said Thursday, warning that the Himalayan region crucial for the water security of millions was close to a potentially disastrous "tipping point".…

John Keay, a correspondent in Kashmir in the 1960s, has written extensively on the Himalayas and on exploration. I enjoyed reading his book The Great Arc: The Dramatic Tale of How India was Mapped and Everest was Named. It is an illuminating account of the longest measurement ever of the earth’s surface that stretched 1,600 miles and took over 40 years to complete. Considering his prolific oeuvre, I was curious about what more he had to say about the world’s highest mountain range in his latest book, Himalaya: Exploring…

Schematic view of the tipping elements of the Earth climate system, their connectivity and teleconnections. The numbered symbols show the potential tipping elements in the Earth system. The dashed yellow lines show the possible connections between these tipping elements and the solid red lines show teleconnection uncovered in this article. The arrows show the direction of the influence. Credit: Nature Climate Change (2023). DOI:…