Mapping the Tibetan World

Rating:
Summary: Informative but limited for climbing, biking...
Review:

If one is not interested in purely religious destinations, another book might be in order.
This book is concerned only with religious destinations in Tibet.
Mountain climbers, trekkers, or bikers concerned perhaps with more terrestrial matters would be better served by a book with mile markers, better maps, and more information on lodging.

I was in Tibet in March of 2002 climbing Mt. Nojin Kansa. I had this book; another guy had a book I won't bother to name. I constantly referred to the other book for mile markers, pass altitudes, international phone providers, etc.

This book will get thee to a nunnery in short order. It will not provide the best maps or travel details.

Rating:
Summary: Ambitious & Successful
Review: 'Mapping the Tibetan World' is a very ambitious project, and one that succeeds brilliantly.

The once-great Tibetan world, though based on common culture and language, has splintered over the centuries into slabs attached to China, India and Nepal--with Bhutan the sole independent nation remaining. This book reassembles the complex jigsaw into a cohesive whole again, making it the perfect guidebook for travellers keen on visiting overlapping regions of the Tibetan plateau on a single trip.

The marvel is how all the complex data is compressed into 424 pages. The maps are highly detailed and many are not found in other sources: among them are excellent trekking maps.

If you want to explore the Tibetan sphere of influence, this is the book.

Michael Buckley, travel writer, author of Heartlands: Travels in the Tibetan World and the Tibet Travel Adventure Guide

Rating:
Summary: So good I bought it twice!
Review: At first glance, I thought this guide would be difficult to use as I was so used to the layout of Lonely Planet. However, I quickly adapted to it and found it very informative and reasonably up to date. Most useful was the section on Buddhism when visiting the extraordinary temples in Tibet, as well as advice on routes to take and how to get places. Unfortunately, after a vehicle accident just outside of Lhasa, my book went missing somewhere between the side of the road and the hospital bed (don't let that put you off visiting this remarkable country!). So I was overjoyed when I discovered the guide again in Kathmandu, and bought another copy so I could continue to use it!

Rating:
Summary: Perhaps my previous review offended...
Review: I wonder what happened to my original review, which seems to have disappeared...

I had tried to go against the conventional wisdom about this book and recommend that, if one is not interested in purely religious destinations, another book might be in order.
This book is concerned only with religious destinations in Tibet.
Mountain climbers, trekkers, or bikers concerned perhaps with more terrestrial matters would be better served by a book with mile markers, better maps, and more information on lodging.

I was in Tibet in March of 2002 climbing Mt. Nojin Kansa. I had this book; another guy had a book I won't bother (this time) to name. I constantly referred to the other book for mile markers, pass altitudes, international phone providers, etc.

This book will get thee to a nunnery in short order. It will not provide the best maps or travel details.

Rating:
Summary: portable encyclopedia of the Tibetan world i was waiting for
Review: Mapping the Tibetan World is the portable encyclopedia of the Tibetan world i was waiting for !
I have now this wonderful little book always close to me so that i can read a bit here and a bit there whenever i have five minutes to spare.
It has informations on all aspects of Tibetan life, culture, history and geography as well as Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and symbols.
The many maps included makes it easy to plan your trip in Tibet and other Tibetan cultural regions.
The only suggestions i could make to the publisher would be a LARGE PRINT version for people who like me have bad eyesight, and may be a color coding to distinguish the various regions (chapters).
A wonderful job done by this team of young explorers, many thanks to them !

Rating:
Summary: Best guide to Tibet
Review: This book is a must for travellers, it has easily the best set of maps to Tibet that I have ever seen and they are really easy to follow. The travel information is also very detailed, especially when it comes to the local public transport timetables and routes. I am also impressed that it covers in detail all the Tibetan areas in the Chinese controlled areas and beyond and not just around Lhasa.

Rating:
Summary: The first guidebook to the whole Tibetan world
Review: This is the first guidebook to include the whole Tibetan world. Roughly one third of the main body of the book is devoted to the Tibetan "Autonomous" Region, one third to other Tibetan lands governed by China, and one third to Bhutan and the Tibetan areas of Nepal and India.

It is an intensely practical book, directed to the independent traveller using public transport. It includes information about public transport which is readily available nowhere else; it does not include the telephone numbers of bus stations - an unfortunate omission.

The many excellent maps include regional maps, and no less than 126 maps of towns, many of them mapped in no other available book.

Important improvements would be: the inclusion of Chinese characters where appropriate in the text; the addition of markers to every Chinese word or name wherever it appears to indicate the tones, without which they cannot be pronounced; and a guide to the pronunciation of Tibetan, without which the section Survival Tibetan is scarcely useful.

Some travellers will want more information about the furnishings and images in Tibetan temples. In most of the territory covered, although not for India, Gyurme Dorje's "Tibet Handbook with Bhutan" (Footprint Handbooks) will provide that information, and be a complementary companion book.

The book will be indispensable for the serious traveller who wishes to understand the extent and the diversity of the Tibetan world.