"My daughters are strong women, I am, and so was my mother," says Dr Tsewang Dolkar Khangkar, 49. Her slight build and gentle demeanor belies a passion for her job - which is her life - as the first Tibetan physician for the community in Delhi. 

Dr Dolkar, as she is known, has an illustrious heritage - there have been physicians in her family for three centuries! She opened a clinic in the Indian capital in 1981, and later began treating patients in Bombay and Hyderabad as well. 

Her mother - the late Dr Lobsang Dolma Khangkar - is often referred to as the 'Mother of Tibetan Medicine'. She was not only the first woman in the family to become a doctor but also the first family member to become a royal physician. Between 1972 and 1978, Dolma was the Chief Medical Officer to the Dalai Lama and his government in exile at the Tibetan Institute of Medicine and Astrology (TIMA) in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh. In fact, she paved the way for future generations of Tibetan women to become physicians.

"Traditionally, Tibetan physicians are men," says Dolkar. "So [what my mother did] was rare. She was also an accomplished astrologer."

Dolma, who also ran a clinic in Dharamsala, travelled the world lecturing on Tibetan medicine and treating patients. Her experience proved invaluable when she set about the task of training her daughter to become a doctor. Training was an intense process that began non-formally for Dolkar at the age of 12. Her formal study was at TIMA between 1972 and '78. 

Dolkar learned about pulse reading, urine analysis, the identification of hundreds of medicinal plants, herbs and minerals used in compounding Tibetan medicines, pharmacology, astrology and worked in her mother's practice from 1978 until 1981. After this internship, she established her own clinic in Delhi on the advice of a junior tutor to the Dalai Lama. 

Dolkar was born in Skyid-gron, southern Tibet, but fled the country via Nepal and into India with her mother after the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1959. It was a journey she barely remembers, but it was a forced exodus that cost the lives of her two elder brothers. "I was two or three-years-old [when I left Tibet]," she says. "I was in shock. There was a lot of shouting. We all remember running away."

Today, at the Dolkar Herbal Medicine Clinic in Kalkaji, south Delhi, the Tibetan doctor meets between 40 and 50 patients a day, six days a week, with the help of a seven-member staff. She also treats patients in Mumbai and Hyderabad by fax and email, and visits each of the two cities every second month.

Tibetan medicine, which pre-dates the seventh-century arrival of Buddhism to Tibet, bases itself on using herbs and minerals to make pills and powders to treat patients. Physicians carry out a physical examination of the patient, but also consider the patient's lifestyle and environment and actions that she may have carried out in her past lives and in her current life. Some of these may -according to Tibetan medicine - influence mental and physical well being. 

"People say they want Tibetan medicine because they are sick of western medicine but I say that's wrong, they should look at positives in all forms of medicine," says Dolkar, and that Tibetan medicine can be used alongside other schools of medicine. To raise awareness about Tibetan medicine globally, she has been travelling often during the past eight years, both to lecture and treat patients. She has also written books on Tibetan medicine. "If people take an interest in it, (Tibetan medicine) can contribute a lot...many of the Tibetan plants (that are used to prepare medicines) have not been researched..."

Dolkar has two daughters - Sonam Paldom and Dechen Dolma - who are now 24 and 22-years-old respectively. While Sonam works with the hotel industry, Dechen has a degree in law. Dolkar's husband, the late Kalsang Dhondup, was a writer and a former leader of the Tibetan Communist Party in exile. 

The precarious balance between work and family life is something that Dolkar took in her stride as a matter of course, despite the fact that she was running the Delhi clinic and looking after her little girls while her husband was in Dharmasala. "I used to carry my babies in my lap while seeing patients. If you make it difficult, it is difficult otherwise life just goes on," she says.

Her pragmatic attitude manifests itself in all aspects of her life. Helping her daughters to develop into strong, capable women - as well as treating her patients to the best of her ability - is what inspires Dolkar. She says, "I want my daughters to be independent emotionally, not [to] depend on me. That's important because life is very unpredictable. If they are very attached to me and something happens to me they would be broken-hearted. Because of losing family in Tibet I know. I want to spare my daughters heartbreak and I want them to stand on their own two feet. They are fantastic."

As for the future, Dolkar says she hopes to use her medical clinic as a tool with which to keep the flame of Tibetan culture alive. Her innate optimism and humor shine through as she talks about what she believes the future holds for her on a personal level. "I don't think much about my {personal} future though at first, I thought about becoming a nun," she adds. "Then I realized I would not be a good nun as I am quite flirtatious."