visitors to Tibet will spend considerable amounts of time at altitudes in excess of this figure. Above 4000 metres there are generally no trees, and the landscape of most of Tibet is, as a result, open and harsh in appearance. Typically, the scenery comprises rolling brown and orange hills, with a backdrop of distant snow-covered peaks, punctuated by occasional settlements where, with irrigation, it is possible each year to grow a single barley crop. As recently as the start of the 20th century, very few Westerners had managed to reach as far as the capital, Lhasa. Amongst the first to be given permission to enter the territory were a number of British mountaineering expeditions, which between 1921 and 1938 attempted to climb Mount Everest from a basecamp in the Rongbuk Valley. After the annexation of the country by the Chinese in 1950, Tibet was even more tightly sealed off from the outside world. In the first years of the 1980’s the first tourists were allowed into Tibet, and the trickle had become something of a flood after the official opening of the country to individual travellers in 1984. However, following a period of political disturbance at the end of the decade the Chinese reimposed restrictions once again. It is now only possible to enter Tibet as a member of a recognised group. The extent of the area known as Tibet had always been difficult to pin down, but with the coming of the Chinese, borders have been drawn up, and the so called TAR (Tibetan Autonomous Region) is now bounded to the north by the Chinese Provinces of Xinjiang and Quinghai, and to the east by Sichuan.