Tibet Tours

Yes. Every foreign traveller needs a Tibet Travel Permit, and it can only be applied for through a registered Tibetan travel agency — you cannot arrange one on your own. We handle the whole application for you once your booking is confirmed, and we send you the permit scan so you can board your flight or train to Lhasa.

No. Foreign travellers cannot move around Tibet independently — you have to be accompanied by a licensed guide and use a registered vehicle for the whole trip. This is a government requirement rather than a company rule, and it is exactly why a small group tour or a private tour is the practical choice.

Both work. Most travellers fly into Lhasa from Chengdu, Chongqing, Xi’an or Kathmandu. The other classic route is the Qinghai–Tibet Railway; the shortest rail option starts in Xining, and longer services run from Chengdu, Beijing and Shanghai. We can book either, and the train is often the gentler way to acclimatise.

Most travellers come between April and October, when the roads to Everest and Mount Kailash are usually open and the weather is mild. Winter is quieter and cheaper and Lhasa stays sunny, but some high passes can close, so the route has to be planned around it. We will tell you honestly what your dates allow.

We do not publish a fixed price list, because the cost depends on your dates, how many people are travelling, the level of hotel you want and whether you fly or take the train. Send us your rough dates and group size and we will send you a clear, itemised quote.

No deposit — ever. Tell us your dates and the route you like using the form on any tour page, or simply email us. Within 12 hours you will have a written itinerary and an itemised quote, with no obligation to book. Once you are happy, USD $100 per person activates your Tibet Travel Permit application — and on fixed group departures we suggest confirming early to secure your seats.

Date changes are free, any time. If we cannot get your permit issued before departure, you receive a full refund.

On a small group tour you join a fixed departure and share the vehicle, guide and hotels with other travellers, which keeps the cost down and still leaves room to do your own thing. Join-in departures run with a minimum of 3 travellers — usually 3–8 pax, and never more than 16. You choose the departure date, the starting point and the itinerary length that suits you; guests on different day counts travel together on the shared legs, and each group leaves when their own itinerary ends. A 3–8 group costs a little more per person and is quieter, with more freedom to change the day on the road; a 3–16 group costs less per person and gives you more people to travel with.

Yes — solo travellers join our small group departures all the time. By default we match you with another traveller of the same gender. If you would rather have a room of your own, the single room supplement is free of charge for any group booking 5 rooms or travelling with 10 or more. Tell us your dates and we will match you to a departure.

Yes, that is a large part of what we do. On a private tour the dates, the pace, the vehicle and the guide are yours alone, and we build the route around what you actually want to see. Tell us your dates and interests and we will draft an itinerary for you.

A first trip usually takes five to eight days. Five days covers Lhasa and Yamdrok Lake; seven to eight days adds Shigatse and Everest Base Camp. If you also want Mount Kailash, the Guge Kingdom or the train from Xining or Chengdu, plan on ten days or more.

Lhasa sits at about 3,650 m and Everest Base Camp at about 5,200 m, so nearly everyone feels the altitude for the first day or two. We start gently — the first days in Lhasa are deliberately light — and our guides watch how everyone is doing. On our small group tours there is oxygen in the vehicle throughout the trip, because you cannot know in advance who will feel the altitude. Tell us in advance about any heart or lung condition and we will build the pace around it.

A passport valid for at least six months, a Chinese visa, and your Tibet Travel Permit which we arrange for you. If you are entering Tibet from Kathmandu you also need a China Group Visa, and we can help you sort that out before you fly.

Yes — we run family trips and trips for senior travellers, and we adjust the pace, the hotels and the amount of driving to suit the group. There is no upper age limit: no one has ever been refused a Tibet Travel Permit for being too old, and our oldest traveller so far was in his early eighties. For very young children the guidance is different. Do not bring a child younger than three years old to the plateau — at extreme altitude the developing heart and lungs of a toddler respond to oxygen deprivation in ways that cannot be reliably predicted or managed in the field. Tell us the ages in your party and we will go through the practical points with you when we plan the route.

Yes. We run a small group overland tour on the G318 from Chengdu into Tibet, as well as self-drive style overland routes. It is one of the most spectacular road journeys in Asia, and it needs a longer trip than a first-time Lhasa visit.

We are a Tibet tour operator based in Lhasa, running our own guides, drivers and vehicles — and we have been doing this since 1999. We do not hand your trip over to another company: everything from the permit application to the hotels and the guide is arranged by our own team on the ground in Tibet.