The herdsmen, tent-dwellers, among them are usually called Drok-pa, and their tents are of yak's hair, with a low wall of dung or stones around the tent base. The tents are moved at intervals, and once a year the herdsmen make their way down hill to market, mostly at Lhasa.
Their food is mainly composed of products of yak's milk. The peas ant-cultivator inhabits chiefly the valleys of the south and south east, and is mostly tied to the soil, partly, no doubt, because men are so scarce. The crop rota tion may give the sequence: barley, fallow, barley, peas, wheat, and the plough is drawn by oxen or yaks.
In addition to herding and agriculture a certain amount of wool-spinning, weaving and knitting is fairly widely-distributed in Tibet, but the immense importance of religious matters in this country makes the production of images and cult-objects a more important matter.
Tibet is so difficult a country that the steppe-conquerors of various periods have usually avoided it completely, and it has practical autonomy, in spite of varying relations, chiefly diplo matic, with China, and to some extent with Britain, through India, and even at times with Russia. Its central position and the longitudinal valleys of the Brahmaputra (Sanpo), the Satlej and the Indus—the passes from the last across into the Tarim basin—and the communications via the valleys of the two last and other Himalayan streams with Kashmir and India, have made Tibet of importance in the caravan trade across Asia.
Batung (Ba'an-fu) and Chamdo in Kham (Chwanben) are among the stations on the ways up from China, the former con necting more especially with Szechuan and Yunnan, the latter with Szechuan, Kansu and Mongolia. To the west, in Tibet proper, the valley between the Himalaya and the trans-Himalaya provides the main line of communication, and portions of the Brahmaputra are navigable. Lhasa is the chief station. From Lhasa it is possible to go south, via Gyantse, to the passes be tween high peaks that lead to Sikkim and India. Ya-tung in the Chumbi valley, was created a mart for Indo-Tibetan trade by the regulations appended (1893) to the Sikkim-Tibet convention of 189o, but it was not successful, and in 1904 an additional mart was fixed at Gyantse. Westward from Lhasa the trade route goes to Shigatse and on past the sacred lakes, Manasarowar and Rakas-tal, reaching the Indus system near Gartok, another mart for Indo-Tibetan trade fixed by the 19o4 convention. Gartok
has ways leading through the Himalaya south to Almora, and a less important one west to Simla; it stands more than i4,000ft. above sea-level. From Gartok the trade route goes on down the Indus to the mart at Leh, the capital of Ladakh, whence there are routes to Kashmir and to the Tarim basin. The main route through Tibet here described is known as the Janglam. The high wilderness of the Chang-t'ang is of less importance for transit purposes, but a route from Lhasa goes north via Nag-chu-ka, farther east, to Urga, in Mongolia. Camels are left at Nag-chu-ka on the way to Lhasa, and the caravans assemble twice a year at Kuku-nor (lake), reaching Lhasa in August and in January. Mules are much used, as also are yaks. Musk, wool and woollen materials, furs, rhubarb, yak's tails, cult-objects, medicinal herbs, etc., are carried especially to China, and tea, rice, porcelain, horses, cereals, silks are imported thence. The trade with India is mainly an exchange of Tibetan wool for manufactured goods. Postal transport may, with good fortune, cover as much as 75m. a day, and there is a telegraph line from Lhasa to Gyantse.