# Gyalo Thondup

Gyalo Thondup (Tibetan: རྒྱལ་ལོ་དོན་འགྲུབ, Wylie: rgyal lo don 'grub; Chinese: 嘉乐顿珠; pinyin: Jiālè Dùnzhū; c. 1928 – 8 February 2025) was a Tibetan political operator in exile. The second-oldest brother of the 14th Dalai Lama, he was his closest advisor. From 1952 onward, he was based in India. Through the 1950s and 1960s, he worked with the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States during its unsuccessful campaign to use armed Tibetan rebels against China.
Thondup helped to negotiate the Dalai Lama's safe passage to India following his escape from Lhasa in 1959. After US support of the Tibetan resistance ended in the 1970s, he often acted as the Dalai Lama's unofficial envoy to China and attempted to negotiate his return.
His bestselling memoir, The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong: The Untold Story of My Struggle for Tibet, was published in 2015. Following his death in 2025, The Washington Post said Thondup was "arguably the second-most important figure in modern Tibetan history", viewed by many governments around the world as a de facto political leader of Tibet.

## Early life and education

Around 1928, Gyalo Thondup was born in the village of Taktser, Amdo (Ping'an District, Qinghai province). He was the third child of Choekyong Tsering and Diki Tsering. The second of five sons, he was their only male child who did not become a monk; his father had intended for him to become a farmer and carry on the family estate.
In 1939, he moved with his family to Lhasa after his younger brother Lhamo Thondup was recognised as the 14th Dalai Lama. As the family settled into its new position as the first family of Tibet, Thondup received training to become the lead advisor to the Dalai Lama. The Reting Rinpoche sent Gyalo to a private school for a traditional Tibetan education, and appointed Ma Bao, a Chinese Muslim, to tutor him in the Chinese language.
In 1942, at the age of 14, Thondup went to Nanjing, the capital of Republican China, to study Standard Chinese and the history of China. From April 1947 to the summer of 1949, he often visited Chiang Kai-shek at his home, ate at his family table, and was educated by tutors selected by Chiang himself. In 1948, he married Zhu Dan, the daughter of a Kuomintang general; she had a degree in social work.

## Political involvement

In 1949, before the Communist revolution of that year in China, Thondup left Nanjing for Tibet with his wife, who became known by the Tibetan name Diki Dolkar. After Chinese troops asserted control over Lhasa, Thondup fled by horseback to India in 1952.
Fluent in Chinese, Tibetan and English, in subsequent decades, Thondup traveled between New Delhi, Taipei, Washington, Hong Kong, and Beijing as an unofficial envoy.

### United States activities

In 1951, he traveled to America and became the main source of information on Tibet for the United States Department of State. The Central Intelligence Agency promised to make Tibet independent from China in exchange for Thondup's support in organizing guerrilla units to fight against the People's Liberation Army, an offer that Thondup accepted.
Thondup helped to recruit approximately 300 fighters to be trained at Camp Hale, Colorado, who in turn trained thousands of others in the Tibetan resistance. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the CIA provided the resistance with an estimated 700,000 pounds of rifles, ammunition, grenades, and radio equipment, and airdropped them into Tibet, but their missions were unsuccessful.
In 1959, Thondup helped to orchestrate the Dalai Lama's safe passage to India after his escape from Tibet, where he was being held by Chinese authorities. Thondup maintained that he did not inform the 14th Dalai Lama about the CIA's actions, out of respect for his pacifist stance. To his disappointment, US support ended after the 1972 Nixon visit to China.

### Later career

With the permission of the Dalai Lama, Thondup met Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1979 for peaceful political talks, to negotiate terms for his brother's return to Tibet. Thondup terminated the discussions in 1993, feeling them to be useless. In the 1990s, Thondup made several official visits to China, acting as the Dalai Lama's unofficial envoy.
In recent years, Thondup urged Tibetans to remain politically engaged, repeatedly stating that dialogue was the only way to achieve progress with China. In 1998, the Central Tibetan Administration in exile criticized Thondup for not letting the Dalai Lama know about the CIA's involvement in Tibet. Over a decade later, Thondup accused his sister-in-law's father of embezzling money from the Central Tibetan Administration.

## Personal life and death

Thundap and his wife Diki Dolkar had a daughter (who died in the early 1980s), as well as two sons. His wife Dolkar died in 1986. In 2002, Thondup visited Lhasa briefly by invitation of the Chinese government.
In retirement, Thondup started a noodle factory in West Bengal, India. In 2015, he published his memoir, The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong: The Untold Story of My Struggle for Tibet, which became a bestseller.
Thondup died at his residence in Kalimpong, West Bengal, on 8 February 2025.

## Publications

* (with Anne F. Thurston), The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong: The Untold Story of the Dalai Lama and the Secret Struggle for Tibet, PublicAffairs, 2015