2009 marks the fiftieth anniversary of China's occupation of Tibet. Over the course of this occupation, more than one million Tibetans have been killed, religious sites have been destroyed, and the traditional Tibetan way of life has been seriously threatened. The reality of the situation in Tibet is not widely acknowledged however, due in part to restricted media access, and in part to the Western tendency to regard Tibet as an eternal Shangri-La. When protests erupted in Lhasa and spread across the world last March and April, the world paid attention, but the situation on the ground in Tibet remained shrouded in mystery. And so I undertook a journey in late 2008 to witness for myself the evidence of fifty years of occupation and exile. This journey brought me from Beijing to Lhasa, and then onwards to Dharamsala, current home of the Dalai Lama. My pictures tell the story of this journey, but more importantly, shed new light on the Tibetan situation today, fifty long years since Chinese occupation.