Nestled high in West Himalaya, India’s Valley of Flowers National Park is renowned for its meadows of endemic alpine flowers and outstanding natural beauty. This richly diverse area is also home to rare and endangered animals, including...

Asia, showing major landforms and waterways, including the Arabian Desert; the Tibetan Plateau and Himalayas, the Gobi Desert, the China Lowlands, Hwang-ho River, Song-ka River, et cetera.

A map from 1906 showing the general land elevations of Asia. This map is color-coded to show lands below sea level in purple, lowlands in green, areas above 1,000 feet above sea level in yellow-buff, and above 4,000 feet in red-buff. The...

An orographic map of Asia from 1885 showing the major mountain systems, plateaus, and plains, rivers, lakes, and coastal features of the region. This map is color-coded to show general elevations, with green representing lowlands and...

A base map from 1891 showing the mountain systems of Asia. The map shows highlands in white, lowlands as shaded, and shows major mountain ranges with heavy black lines. Major rivers are shown. The map is keyed to show the Himalaya...

An orographic map of Asia from 1912 showing average elevations and land features of the region. The map uses color-contouring to show land elevations from depressions below sea level to above 12,000 feet. Offshore fathom contour lines...

A map of British India during the reign of King George II (1727-1760) and British Major-General Robert Clive's campaigns in India (1744-1774). The map shows Calcutta as the capital at the time, and shows the territory of Bengal extending...

A map from 1910 of the Indian subcontinent and the Central Asia region showing the typical rainfall distribution patterns during the summer monsoons, keyed to show areas of rainfall ranging from very light to, according to this text, the...

A map from 1912 of British India showing ancient Indian temples sites in the region. The map coverage extends from Kandahar (Afghanistan) and Kashmir in the west to Keng Tung and Rangoon (Myanmar) in the east, and from the Himalaya...

The national flag of Nepal, a country located in the Himalayas with a population of over 26 million people. It is bordered by China to the north and India to the south.

Follow the road from Tibet to Nepal through these photographs. Part of a larger collection of photos taken in Asia.

Photographs and brief description of the tallest mountain in the world.

Over the centuries four religious movements in Tibet evolved into the four religious orders of Tibetan Buddhism. These orders are all based on Buddhism from India, but they have different founders and lineages of teachers, prefer...

Buddhism was introduced into Tibet from India and China beginning in the 600s. Over the succeeding centuries, Buddhism became the dominant cultural form in Tibet, exerting a powerful influence not only over religion, but also over...

Bon, Tibet's indigenous belief system, is a high form of religious ritualism primarily concerned with righting the causes of human ailment and misfortune and coexisting with the underlying forces of the universe. It focuses on the...

This Tibetan manuscript is one of the oldest objects in the museum's Tibetan collection. It consists of twenty-two loose pages. The text is written in U-chen script, in pure gold ink, which has been applied on a ground of lapiz lazuli...

The Goddess of the White Umbrella (the Buddhist deity Ushnisha-sitatapatra) is one of many powerful female deities. She manifests her power with her thousand heads, arms, and legs. She has eyes on the palms of each of her hands and soles...

A mandala is a schematic diagram that portrays the sacred environment of a particular deity. The mandala is used by practitioners as a guideline for meditation. It helps people visualize the way in which they will restructure the world...

The main image in this painting is Avalokiteshvara (1), the Bodhisattva of Compassion. He is the principle patron deity of Tibet. He sits on a lotus throne upon a lunar disc. This god takes many forms, such as the Dalai Lamas of Tibet,...

Mahakala Bramanarupa is one of over 70 different deities of the Mahakala type. These are wrathful deities particularly adept at quelling monsters and overcoming demons, whether they be outer, inner or secret. Some deities, such as...

In Tibet, religious paintings come in several forms, including wall paintings, thangkas (sacred pictures that can be rolled up), and miniatures for ritual purposes or for placement in household shrines. Thangkas were commissioned for...

Penden Lhamo is one of the more wrathful female deities of Buddhism. Among her many roles, she is the special protector of the city of Lhasa, the Gelukpa Order, and the Dalai Lamas of Tibet. She was invited to Tibet in around the...

This black cabinet was once stored in the gongkhang of an unknown temple in Tibet. Forbidden to the uninitiated, the gongkhang is a special room set aside for the worship of wrathful deities, where only the initiated monks of the...

Prayer wheels are an example of Buddhist technology. This technology allowed the faithful to multiply the number of prayers they expressed by millions. This is because prayer wheels are filled with copies of mantras (sacred spells...