ABSTRACT
Shigatse, nestled in the brown hills that rise up sharply behind the town, was once a fortified stronghold as well as the site of a vast, extremely powerful monastery, which once controlled an area called Tsang-the surrounding region of western Tibet to the Nepalese border. At the confluence of two major rivers, the Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) and the Nyanchu (Liancuo), the town lies in a fertile, sixty-mile-long valley stretching from Shigatse to Gyantse, where barley and wheat, staples of the traditionally austere Tibetan diet, long have been cultivated.
