Day by Day
Day 1 Kathmandu to Nyalam (3,880m)
Early breakfast and trek briefing in Kathmandu, where the Sherpa team goes over the route, the altitude schedule, and what to expect at the border. The drive to Kodari covers 153 kilometers and takes six to seven hours through increasingly dramatic terrain as the hills steepen toward the Himalayan foothills. At Kodari, complete Nepalese immigration formalities and cross the Friendship Bridge on foot into Zhangmu, the Chinese border town on the Tibetan side. Chinese customs clearance, then transfer into 4WD Land Cruisers with the Tibetan team. The Sherpa team loads the expedition gear. Continue the climb to Nyalam, your first overnight at altitude. Eat lightly, drink water, and sleep if you can. The altitude starts here.
Stay: Guest House, Nyalam
Day 2 Nyalam to Xegar (3,860m)
A six-hour drive that earns its reputation. The road climbs over the Nyalamu and Lalung La passes through high grassland, past yak herds and the occasional nomad encampment, with views that open wider the higher the road climbs. On a clear day, somewhere above 5,000 meters, the North Face of Mt. Everest at 8,848 meters becomes visible to the south. This is not the face most people have seen in photographs. The south face, the route most expedition teams take, faces Nepal. The north face, the Tibetan face, is broader, more severe, and in certain conditions more imposing. Most guests see it for the first time from a moving Land Cruiser on a road at altitude and find themselves asking the driver to stop. Arrive in Xegar in the afternoon.
Stay: Guest House, Xegar
Day 3 Xegar to Xigatse (3,900m)
The longest drive of the overland section: eight hours across the plateau. The road passes the Pieko-Tso Lake, whose surface shifts between deep blue and silver depending on the light and the clouds above it. Cross the Yarlung Tsangpo, which Tibetans consider one of the world's great rivers and which becomes the Brahmaputra as it bends south through India into Bangladesh. The Gyatsola Pass at 5,220 meters is the highest point on the entire overland route and the place where the full scale of the Tibetan Plateau becomes undeniable: the land stretches in every direction without a tree, without a building, without anything between you and the horizon except the road. Arrive in Xigatse, Tibet's second-largest city, in the late afternoon.
Stay: Guest House, Xigatse
Day 4 Xigatse to Gyantse (4,000m)
Morning visit to the Tashilhunpo Monastery, founded in 1447 by Gendun Drup, the first Dalai Lama, and traditionally the seat of the Panchen Lama since the 17th century. The monastery is enormous: 300,000 square meters, housing at its peak over 4,000 monks, with temples, chapels, and courtyards organized around a central assembly hall and the massive chorten containing the tombs of the Panchen Lamas. The Maitreya Chapel holds a 26-meter gilded bronze statue of the future Buddha, the largest in Tibet. Browse the Xigatse free market before the 90-kilometer drive to Gyantse. The Kumbum Stupa in Gyantse was built in the early 15th century as a three-dimensional mandala, a multi-story circular structure containing 77 chapels on nine levels, each decorated with murals and statues representing different aspects of Buddhist doctrine. The Palkhor Temple beside it is unusual in that it houses monks from three separate schools of Tibetan Buddhism simultaneously, a coexistence that reflects Gyantse's historical role as a trading crossroads.
Stay: Guest House, Gyantse
Day 5 Gyantse to Lhasa (3,650m)
The 300-kilometer drive to Lhasa is the most visually extraordinary day of the overland journey. The road climbs above Yamdrok Lake at 4,441 meters and the view from the high road is one of the defining images of Tibet: a lake shaped roughly like a scorpion, its surface a deep turquoise that has no equivalent at lower elevations, surrounded by dry brown hills and a sky that, at this altitude, is a shade of blue that photographers spend careers trying to reproduce. Yamdrok is one of Tibet's four holy lakes and is believed to be the home of wrathful protective deities. The lake is also considered a barometer of Tibet's spiritual health: if it dries up, the land dies with it. The Kalais Kora Glacier is visible from the same road. Continue to Lhasa, descending to 3,650 meters, the lowest point since the Nepal border. The city appears below the road as the valley widens.
Stay: Hotel, Lhasa
Day 6 Lhasa The Potala and History
The Potala Palace was begun by the 5th Dalai Lama in 1645 on the site of a 7th-century meditation retreat used by Songtsen Gampo, the king who unified Tibet and introduced Buddhism to the country. The building that stands today is 13 stories tall, contains over 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines, and approximately 200,000 statues, and served as the winter residence of the Dalai Lamas until 1959. The Red Palace at the center holds the tombs of eight Dalai Lamas. The White Palace on either side served as administrative offices and living quarters. The total effect, from the base of Marpo Ri hill looking up, is a building that appears to grow out of the rock it sits on. Afternoon visit to the Tibet Museum, which holds prehistoric artifacts from the plateau, ancient gold-inscribed sutras, thangka paintings, and materials documenting the history of the region from the earliest human habitation to the present.
Stay: Hotel, Lhasa
Day 7 Lhasa Monasteries and Markets
Sera Monastery was founded in 1419 and at its height housed approximately 5,000 monks. It is now home to several hundred and remains an active center of Tibetan Buddhist education. The monastery's debating courtyard is open to visitors in the afternoon, when monks gather to conduct the dialectical debates that are central to Tibetan Buddhist monastic training. The debates are physical as well as verbal: monks punctuate their arguments with hand claps, foot stamps, and the swinging of prayer beads, and the courtyard becomes a place of considerable noise and energy that bears no resemblance to a Western idea of religious contemplation. Norbulingka, the Jeweled Park, was established by the 7th Dalai Lama in the 18th century as a summer retreat and contains palaces, temples, and gardens across 36 hectares of parkland. The Jokhang Temple, at the center of the old city, is the most sacred site in Tibetan Buddhism, built in the 7th century to house a statue of the Buddha brought to Tibet by the Chinese wife of King Songtsen Gampo. The Barkhor Street circuit surrounding the temple is walked daily by pilgrims who have been making this same circumambulation for over 1,300 years.
Stay: Hotel, Lhasa
Day 8 Departure to Kathmandu
After breakfast, transfer to Gonggar Airport, 62 kilometers from Lhasa. The scenic flight back to Kathmandu crosses the Himalayan range, and on a clear morning, the peaks are visible from the aircraft as the terrain drops from plateau to foothills to the Kathmandu Valley below. The flight lasts approximately one hour and covers, in reverse, terrain that took five days to cross overland. The contrast is deliberate. The road was chosen because the plateau cannot be understood from the air.
Stay: International Departure from Kathmandu
