Looking through some old photos today, I stumbled across a photo taken in 1946 of my Grandfather with Robert Ford in Lhasa!
My Grandfather and Robert Ford first met in Sikkim. Ford later moved to Lhasa to work for the Tibetan government so they must have met again there as my Grandfather was working for the British Mission.
As many people know, Ford went on to be stationed in Chamdo and was arrested and imprisoned by the Chinese in 1950. He wrote about his experiences in “Captured in Tibet“, published in 1957. Robert Ford is still alive today and apparently spoke at an event in London in 2008 marking His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s birthday!
Old photos of Tibet are so amazing, you can spend hours going through the collection here from Oxford’s Pitt-Rivers Museum!