For Tibetan and Nepali terms, I use phonetic spellings throughout the text for ease of reading. Readers should refer to the glossary (at the back of the book) to ascertain the correct Tibetan and Nepali spellings and the meanings of non-English terms. The glossary first provides the phonetic spelling of Tibetan terms in bold, the correct spelling in italics using the Wiley system, and then defines the terms in English.* For Nepali terms, I then provide the phonetic spelling in bold, a transliteration according to the Devanagari spelling in italics, as well as a definition of the terms in English.** Place names, personal names, and proper nouns are capitalized here and throughout the text, and are not generally italicized; however, these do appear in bold on first use. In the text, phonetic versions of Tibetan and Nepali terms are mostly italicized throughout (except on first use, where they are given in bold—or where the term is familiar, like lama or yak). In the glossary and in the text, the scientific Latin names of animal and plant species are italicized and identified in parentheses—for example: (L., Homo sapiens).