16 Days Mt. Kailash Pilgrimage + Guge Kingdom — Exit Tibet via the G219 into Xinjiang

Lhasa → Potala Palace → Tashilunpo Monastery → Everest Base Camp → Lake Manasarovar → Mt. Kailash Kora → Guge Kingdom → Ali → Xinjiang Border

1. Day1

   Arrive Lhasa

   Meals NoneOvernight Lhasa hotel

   Arrive at Lhasa airport and transfer to hotel. Rest and acclimatize.

2. Day2

   Lhasa — Potala Palace, Jokhang Temple, Barkhor Street

   Meals BreakfastOvernight Lhasa hotel

   Visit the Potala Palace, Jokhang Temple and Barkhor Street pilgrim circuit.

3. Day3

   Lhasa — Sera Monastery, Drepung Monastery

   Meals BreakfastOvernight Lhasa hotel

   Visit Drepung and Sera Monasteries, including the famous monk debates at Sera (15:00–17:00).

4. Day4

   Lhasa — Yamdrok Lake — Gyantse — Shigatse

   Meals BreakfastOvernight Shigatse hotel

   Drive over Kampala Pass for views of Yamdrok Lake and the Karola Glacier. Visit Gyantse Kumbum then continue to Shigatse and Tashilunpo Monastery.

5. Day5

   Shigatse — Everest Base Camp

   Meals BreakfastOvernight EBC guesthouse/tent

   From Shigatse the road heads west through Lhatse and Tingri before a dramatic turn south toward Everest. The route climbs through checkpoints to Rongbuk Monastery at 4,980m — the highest monastery in the world — its courtyard facing the north face of Everest in a view that photographs consistently fail to reproduce.

   Everest Base Camp at 5,200m is reached by electric shuttle bus. The north face rises more than 3,000 vertical metres above the valley floor in one unbroken sweep. Spend the night here — the experience is quieter and more powerful than most travellers expect.

6. Day6

   EBC — Saga

   Meals BreakfastOvernight Saga guesthouse

   Sunrise at EBC. Drive west past Mt. Shishapangma and the cobalt-blue Pelkhu-tso Lake to Saga county.

7. Day7

   Saga — Lake Manasarovar — Darchen

   Meals NoneOvernight Darchen guesthouse

   Drive west to the sacred Lake Manasarovar (4,588m) — regarded as the holiest lake in Asia by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains alike. Continue to Darchen at the foot of Mt. Kailash.

8. Day8

   Kailash Kora Day 1 — Darchen to Driapuk (4,920m)

   Meals NoneOvernight Driapuk guesthouse

   Begin the 52km sacred circumambulation of Mt. Kailash. Trek through the Sarshung valley, passing pilgrims and nomads, to Driapuk Monastery guesthouse.

9. Day9

   Kailash Kora Day 2 — Driapuk to Dolma La (5,630m) to Dzultripuk

   Meals NoneOvernight Dzultripuk guesthouse

   The toughest day: ascend to the highest pass of the Kora, the Dolma La at 5,630m, with extraordinary views of the sacred mountain. Descend to Dzultripuk (Milarepa’s Cave).

10. Day10

    Kailash Kora Day 3 — Dzultripuk to Darchen

    Meals NoneOvernight Zanda guesthouse

    Complete the final leg of the Kailash Kora, visiting caves and sacred sites, and walk back to Darchen. Drive on toward Zanda.

11. Day11

    Guge Kingdom — Zanda Earth Forest — Tholing Monastery

    Meals NoneOvernight Zanda guesthouse

    The Guge Kingdom was founded in the 10th century after the collapse of the Tibetan Empire — a royal prince fled west to Ngari and established a new Buddhist domain. For six centuries it was a centre of scholarship and art, its capital city carved into a dramatic clay hill above the Sutlej River. Then in the 17th century it vanished — a Ladakhi siege and disputed internal events — leaving tens of thousands of rooms empty and silent.

    What survives is extraordinary: cave chambers and surviving temples with 15th-century murals still on the walls, reached by steep paths cut into the eroding cliff face. Tholing Monastery nearby is one of the oldest standing Buddhist sites in Tibet. The surrounding Zanda Earth Forest — millions of years of ancient lake sediment eroded into spires, mesas and ochre-gold canyon formations — is one of the most surreal geological spectacles in all of western Tibet. Sunset here rarely disappoints.

12. Day12

    Zanda — Ali (Shiquanhe)

    Meals NoneOvernight Ali hotel

    Drive north to Ali — the administrative centre of the remote Ngari Prefecture — across the windswept Tibetan plateau.

13. Day13

    Ali — G219 Highway North — Into the Uninhabited Zone

    Meals NoneOvernight Roadside guesthouse

    Leaving Ali, the G219 National Highway points north — and the landscape changes almost immediately. The plateau opens into an immensity of space that makes even Ngari seem populated. The G219 runs at an average elevation of over 4,500 metres for hundreds of kilometres through terrain that is effectively uninhabited: no towns, no fuel stations beyond scattered military outposts, minimal mobile signal. Your driver is experienced on this road and carries spare fuel.

    The landscape is hypnotic in its austerity — vast plains the colour of bleached bone, the Kunlun Mountains hardening the northern horizon, a sky so clear it seems to belong to a different planet. Roadside guesthouses are sparse concrete buildings with a kerosene stove. Arriving here for the night feels genuinely remote in a way that the Kailash circuit, for all its wildness, does not.

14. Day14

    G219 — Aksai Chin Plateau — Approaching Xinjiang

    Meals NoneOvernight Roadside guesthouse

    The second day on the G219 continues north across the Aksai Chin plateau — one of the highest and most desolate tablelands on earth, disputed territory between China and India, essentially uninhabited. The Kunlun Mountains grow taller as you approach Xinjiang, and the ground gradually shifts from Tibetan red-brown to the lighter yellows and greys of the Central Asian steppe.

    The air thickens almost imperceptibly as the altitude eases. You may not notice the oxygen improving until you realise you have stopped monitoring your breathing quite so carefully. The last guesthouse before the Xinjiang entry point is basic beyond description — and likely one of the most remote places you will ever sleep.

15. Day15

    Entering Xinjiang — Drive to Kashgar

    Meals NoneOvernight Kashgar hotel

    Crossing into Xinjiang, the transformation is immediate and total. Architecture changes — whitewashed mosques with minarets replace monastery walls and prayer flags. Script on shopfronts shifts from Tibetan and Chinese to Uyghur. The faces, the food, the sounds of the street: everything changes. After two weeks in the Tibetan Buddhist world, the arrival in Kashgar — the great Silk Road city of Central Asia — is one of the most striking cultural transitions possible anywhere on earth.

    Kashgar’s Id Kah Mosque is the largest in China; the Grand Bazaar fills entire city blocks with traders from across the Tarim Basin; the old city is a labyrinth of mud-brick lanes and craft workshops unchanged in character for centuries. Walking it in the evening, it is easy to forget entirely that you were on a sacred mountain just a week ago.

16. Day16

    Kashgar — Departure

    Meals Breakfast

    Free morning in Kashgar before your flight or onward journey. The Sunday Grand Bazaar — one of the largest open-air markets in Asia — is worth an early rise if your schedule allows. The old city alleys reward a final slow wander: coppersmith workshops, silk traders, dried fruit sellers and tea houses serving the same families for generations. Your guide transfers you to Kashgar Airport or the train station for the journey home.

    Meals: Breakfast Tibet Permit — Required for All Visitors Every visitor to Tibet must hold a Tibet Tourism Bureau (TTB) permit. It is mandatory, cannot be obtained on arrival, and differs by nationality. We handle the full application once you book — please allow at least 15 days before your departure date.