Homelands
Tibetan Buddhism continues in Tibet under Chinese administration, with restrictions on monastic numbers, education and the public role of teachers. It is also the religion of Bhutan, of Himalayan India from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh, of large parts of Nepal, and of Mongolia, where it has been rebuilt since 1990 after a near total destruction in the 1930s.
The exile communities in India and Nepal hold the re-founded monasteries, the publishing houses and much of the training.
Abroad
There are Tibetan Buddhist centres in most Western countries, often more numerous than the local Tibetan population. Three day teachings, long retreats, translation projects and academic programmes have made a tradition that was once nearly inaccessible unusually well documented in English.
The open question
The succession of the fourteenth Dalai Lama, now in his nineties, is unresolved and politically contested: the Chinese state asserts a right to approve the recognition of reincarnate teachers, and he has said the institution's future, including whether it continues at all, is for Tibetans to decide.
Why it matters
Once concentrated in the Himalayas, now practised worldwide.
History and tradition
What historians can say
Population figures for Tibetan Buddhists are unreliable for political reasons as much as practical ones. Donald Lopez's work remains a useful corrective to the romantic picture of Tibet that Western interest has tended to produce.