Early in the eighteenth century the European traveller Desideri who made a journey through Tibet and visited Lhasa wrote of the Cong-bo region of south-eastern Tibet that “all the Congo-bo provinces lying to the south of the river [the Tsangpo] march with the people called Lhoba which means Southern People… Not even the Tibetans, who are close neighbours and have many dealings with them, are allowed to enter their country but are obliged to stop on the frontier to barter their goods.”