It's always interesting to have two completely different takes on the same subject in one afternoon. This is what we got in March, starting with , an area never covered before by London Meetings. Head-taking was a sign of fertility and the heads of women and children the most prized of all. These attitudes contrast with the historically strong influence of Tibetan Buddhism. Old monasteries are still everywhere, one of them an exact replica of the Lhasa Potala, and built by the same architects.
Modern jewellery tends to be silver rather than brass, with turquoise the main gemstone.
Colonel S S Singh of the Indian Army then gave us another side. The incredible lushness of vegetation, supporting a wildlife from snow leopards to tigers, meant that his expedition could live off the land. Not surprisingly, each tribe practises its own form of animism, worshipping deities like the sun, snakes or water. With so many languages, the only commonality is English itself. Nowadays many villages live communally in the same sort of bamboo longhouse found further east.