Regions in Tibet
Qamdo, Chamdo, Chab mdo or Changdu?
Any place in Tibet can be spelled at least four different ways. Tibetan Pinyin (Qamdo) combines Tibetan pronunciation with Chinese pinyin spelling: it's used on signs, tickets and such, and being the most useful for the traveller it's what Wikitravel uses too. Tournadre (Chamdo) uses more Western spelling, but is not often seen in Tibet itself. Scholars like Wylie (Chab mdo), which copies Tibetan writing precisely but makes pronouncing near-impossible (eg. Bka' rgyud is read "Kagyu"). Finally, any place in Tibet has a Chinese name (昌都), which can be read as Chinese (Changdu).
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There are seven prefectures in the Tibet Autonomous Region:
Lhasa
Qamdo
Nagqu
Ngari
Nyingchi
Shannan
Xigatse
This article only covers the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). There are also Tibetan autonomous prefectures and or counties located in the provinces of Qinghai, southwest Gansu, western Sichuan and northwest Yunnan, covered in the articles on those provinces. These areas are culturally, historically and linguistically Tibetan to various degrees; there was once a Tibetan Kingdom considerably larger than the autonomous region's current borders. As recently as the early 20th Century, all of what is today the TAR, plus additional bordering areas were effectively de-facto independent of Chinese control. However, Tibet and its accompanying regions fell back under Chinese control and were forcefully incorperated into China in 1950. In contemporary China, the term Tibet refers only to the TAR, but the term "Tibetan Regions", with its focus on all of ethnographic Tibet is becoming more widespread in China as well.
See List of Chinese provinces and regions for an explanation of the terms "autonomous region" and "autonomous prefecture" if required.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Tibet