The Tibetan Plateau, the highest and largest plateau in the world, is well known as ‘The Third Pole’. Tibet has also been called ‘Asia’s water tower’ because so many of Asia’s major rivers such as the Ganges, Indus, Tsangpo/Brahmaputra, Mekong, Yellow and Yangse rivers originate there. Despite its importance, the uplift history of the plateau and the mechanisms underpinning its evolution are still unclear, largely because reliable measurements of past surface elevation are hard to obtain.