Size: Tibet covers 470,000 square miles.

Terrain: It is situated on a high plateau with an average altitude of about 16,000 feet. It is bounded on the north by the Kunlun Shan mountain range, on the west by the Karakoram range, on the southwest by the Ladakh range, on the entire southern frontier by the Himalayan range and on the east by the Yangtze river. It shares about a 1,570-mile border with India and has traditionally been considered a buffer between India and China.

Climate: This varies from mild and even subtropical in southern Tibet, to the cold steppe and desert climate in Northeast, to the semipolar conditions in the northern and northwestern mountains.

Population: This totals about six million. Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal total 130,000 and about 30,000 respectively.