Gyalo Thondup

Gyalo Thondup (Tibetan: རྒྱལ་ལོ་དོན་འགྲུབ, Wylie: rgyal lo don 'grub; Chinese: 嘉乐顿珠; pinyin: Jiālè Dùnzhū; c. 1928 – 8 February 2025) was a Tibetan political operator in exile. The second-oldest brother of the 14th Dalai Lama, he was his closest advisor. From 1952 onward, he was based in India. Through the 1950s and 1960s, he worked with the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States during its unsuccessful campaign to use armed Tibetan rebels against China.

Thondup helped to negotiate the Dalai Lama's safe passage to India following his escape from Lhasa in 1959. After US support of the Tibetan resistance ended in the 1970s, he often acted as the Dalai Lama's unofficial envoy to China and attempted to negotiate his return.

His bestselling memoir, The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong: The Untold Story of My Struggle for Tibet, was published in 2015. Following his death in 2025, The Washington Post said Thondup was "arguably the second-most important figure in modern Tibetan history", viewed by many governments around the world as a de facto political leader of Tibet.