tibet

[poly800rock]

anyone ever go? I'm looking to do some traveling this summer and this crossed my mind....that or nepal? which one would you choose I have like 15 days.

[N(N)]

anyone ever go? I'm looking to do some traveling this summer and this crossed my mind....that or nepal? which one would you choose I have like 15 days.

I'm going to Tibet this summer.

[jcotteri]

Go to Bhutan if your ballin!

[The_D]

Poly, I just wrote you a ludicrously long reply to your request, and ended-up getting logged-out and losing the whole lot. So I’ll keep it shorter this time.

Nepal is a great place for travelling around, and is well set-up for solo travellers. There are plenty of travel agencies in Kathmandu that you can deal with when you arrive, who can arrange all kinds of activities, internal travel and so on. Food is good (the best curry I’ve eaten was in Kathmandu, although the chef has now left the restaurant (the Moti Mahal)), and the people very friendly. Kathmandu is a bit of a scene, but once you leave the city, it’s a beautiful country. Some of the more popular trekking routes (generally anything with the word ‘Annapurna’ in it) can be a bit crowded, and it’s sometimes hard to get away from it all, which can kind of defeat the purpose of being there. But a great place to visit.

Tibet, however, really is something else – utterly spectacular scenery, and wildly barren in places. Even at some of the more ‘popular’ tourist sites (e.g. Nam Tso lake), you can still feel like you’re the only people there; and Everest base camp (on the Tibetan side) feels like the surface of the Moon. But… the Chinese military/police presence, along with the relentless sprawl resulting from Chinese urban colonization in the cities, is impossible to ignore. The military presence also makes it hard to get around as a solo traveller. The last time I was there, the easiest way to get around was still as part of a group visa, which means you have to travel with that group; as well as entering the country with that group… this may have changed, and you’d have to check that. But given the recent demonstrations, I can’t imagine this will have eased. You used to be able get in with a solo Chinese visa, but this was really touch and go. I met people who had got in, eventually, after three or four tries; and I guess you don’t want to spend your two weeks vacation loitering round the border. But if you do choose Tibet, it is a truly spectacular place to visit. Getting around is hard (I lost a whole day moving rocks from a landslide – by hand – with other bus travellers, and then had to push the bus over the remaining rocks while the Chinese military stood and laughed), the food can be abysmal (unless you like boiled chicken's feet, say), but the people and scenery are worth it. And if you do go, try to get on a trip that leaves the country overland via the Friendship Highway to Nepal – a ridiculously vertiginous white-knuckle drive from the Tibetan plateau down to the green foothills outside Kathmandu.

Bhutan is also spectacular, but I guess the infamous daily tourist tax is still in place, which can make it prohibitively expensive. You might be able to get round this – my wife got a place on a trip from Nepal that was sponsored by the Bhutanese government, to look at development opportunities for adventure tourism, which meant they avoided having to pay the tax; but if you can’t , it adds a chunky extra cost to your trip.

One final thought: if you only have two weeks, and you’re travelling in the summer, please give serious consideration to Ladakh, in northern India. It’s not called ‘Little Tibet’ for nothing. You can get there easily (Jet Airways flies from Delhi every day, and it takes about an hour, I recall), and Leh is a great base for trips into the mountains, to get your fill of temples and Tibetan culture. The food is good, and there are loads of travel agents in Leh who can sort you out with all sorts of trips and activity. Leh is, like Kathmandu, a bit ‘scene-y’ (with lots of European travellers exchanging, “when I was in Thailand…” stories), but not nearly as much as Dharamsala, say (where the Dalai Lama lives). Also, you can drive over the two highest motorable roads in the world, which are completely breathtaking in every sense of the word.

Whichever one you choose, take a good camera (with a polarizing filter to deal with the high altitude sunlight).

[N(N)]

i'm going seriously. Probably around aug. If you interested in come with me. Contact me.