You will be greeted by your Tibetan guide once you arrive in Lhasa Gonggar airport or train station, from airport to Lhasa city is 68km, around one hour and half drive will take you to the holy city Lhasa; from the train station it is only 15km and takes 20 minutes by drive. Afternoon have a good rest to acclimatize the high altitude. Overnight at Lhasa.
The first day of sightseeing starts from Lhasa's cardinal landmark-Potala Palace, a structure of massive portions. Its towering image already appearing on various occasions, but your first sight of the Potala will still be an awe-inspiring moment. It takes at least a good 2-hour to visit those rooms, halls and chapels. In the afternoon, we will drop a visit of the Jokhang Temple, the spiritual center of Tibet. Everyday, pilgrims from every corner of Tibet trek a long distance to the temple. The temple is the product of Han, Tibetan and Nepalese architectural techniques. Then we will visit Barkhor, the oldest street in a very traditional city in Tibet.
Potala Palace
Jokhang Temple
About 8km west of central Lhasa is the Drepung Monastery, once world's largest monastery with about 10,000 monks. This day's sightseeing begins with these white monastic buildings piled up on the hillside. Walking up to the hill is a pleasant thing, an easy break from the solemn ambience inside the halls and chapels. At the plat roof of hillside, you can have very good views of the whole Lhasa city and the distant mountains. Drepung is one of Lhasa's two great Gelugpa monasteries, the other is Sera Monastery. Around 5km north of central Lhasa, Sera may not be as grandiose as Drepung, but is more serene surrounded by many small temples. The 'Buddhism Scriptures Debating' in Sera is very famous.
Drepung Monastery
Sera Monastery
After breakfast today, drive to Tsedang, a journey through Tibet’s early history. Located by Yarlung Valley, known as “the Cradle of Tibetan Civilization”, Tsedang is the gateway to the ancient Yarlung Kingdom, and the capital of Shannan Prefecture. Today you will visit Tibet's first palace built in the 7th century-Yumbulagang, a medieval-European-castle-like structure. On your journey home, stop at Trandruk Monastery, where you can see stunning Tangkha of Pearls decorated with a total of 29,026 pearls.
Yumbulagang
Trandruk Monastery
Today’s visit is to Samye Monastery which is a 40km drive from Tsedang city. Samye is believed as Tibet’s first monastery, built between 775AD and 779AD. Its main building is a three-story tower with an interior influenced by Tibetan, Han and Indian styles. Then drive back to Lhasa.
Samye Monastery
Samye Monastery
Today, meet your guide at the hotel lobby, directly drive to the airport and see-off.
Potala Palace
Mt. Everest
Yamdrok Lake
Sera Monastery
Namtso Lake
Mt. Kailash
From Jan, CzechThe trip went exactly as planned and we saw exactly everything that was promised in the program. I chose this travel agency by chance, but it turned out that I could not have chosen a better one for seeing Mount Everest, so I highly recommend it to everyone.
From Vicki, United KingdomOur guide in Lhasa called Phurbur was excellent and answered all our questions on Tibet as well as giving us loads of information and taking us to some cheap local eating places (as we requested) where he ate with us.
