Video: Tibet's Hidden Kingdom (National Geographic)

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This documentary tells how Britain first spied on and then invaded Tibet in the 19th century. The first part is about Nain Singh who was a trained English surveyor spy and who disguised as a pilgrim mapped out the route from India to Lhasa by counting his own footsteps in the 1860s. He also mapped the longitude, latitude and altitude of Lhasa for the first time.

Nain Singh

In the 19th century Tibet was threatened by the encrouching British Empire from northern India and by the Russian Empire of the tsars expanding south into Central Asia. By the 1850s Tibet had banned all foreigners from Tibet and shut its borders.

The second half of the film tells about Colonel Francis Younghusband who led a British armed expedition that massacred between 500 and 1300 Tibetans in 1904. A treaty followed in 1906 that required Tibet to open its border to British India.

Francis Younghusband

After a mystical experience in Tibet, Younghusband later in his life got more into the occult and came to believe in free love.

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