China Travel Forum

[Josephine]

Im a single Aussie girl, just finishing up a teaching contract and wanting to experience Tibet before heading home. Ive travelled extensively in Europe, but find China a different kettle of fish, especially with the language barrier.

Has anyone got any suggestions what and where to go from Lhasa, and how much to budget for 2 weeks. I dont mind living on the cheap, and enjoy the company of fellow travellers rather than big groups. Im planning to go end of February, where there may not be a lot of options, but a place not worth missing!!
thanks

[Wangme]

There are a lot of different ways of travel to and within Tibet. If you wanna go cheap and are happy figuring things out as you go here's my recommendation:

Fly or Train into Chengdu: Hunt down a local travel agent (check on previous posts) and buy just the train or plane ticket with your Tibet permit. (You can get the train ticket without Tibet permit...this is OK!)
Once in Lhasa....You can travel anywhere within the greater Lhasa area by local transport (taxi or bus) with no extra permits or anything.

This includes Ganden, Druk Yerpa, Drigung etc. This can be done dirt cheap.
If you want to travel to more remote places you offically need travel permits. This begins to get more pricey as you have few alternatives to renting a vehicle and driver. Once you are in Lhasa there will be a small number of travel agencies open in Feb. You can simply meet up wiith other travellers....share a landcruiser and head off to more remote places such as EBC or Namtso etc. Check on here regularly but also just hang out in the cafes/restaurants (Snowlands, Summit, Banak Shol are all good for this) Also look on the notice boards at the hotels.

Feb is total low season so a great time to go. The old part of town is usually FULL of pilgrims and nomads in town for New Years and the winter. The down side of this time of year is that it can be a little harder to find travelling companions and nights cab rather cold (nothing a good down jacket and some other woolies won't fix though!)

Don't stress about the language barrier....you'll get by....a surprising amount of Tibetans and Chinese have enough English to figure things out with you (being good at charades also helps!)
Enjoy