Visit Tibet on a Budget

Do you want to visit Tibet on a budget?

Travelling to Tibet is never cheap and independent travel is never allowed. But you can visit Tibet on a Budget. When you have local information. Lots of local Tibetan travel agencies in Lhasa fail to provide in-depth information about Tibet tourism; This makes lots of travel agencies make lots of extra money with the advantage of this miss information. But please keep in your mind that even the lowest Tibet tour packages price could be costly.

With our years of experience as a tour operator and being a tour guide for more than two-decade. We think there is a way you can avoid paying a massive amount of money to the travel agencies. We believe we have some ideas for reducing the tour price and letting you have the opportunity to travel to Tibet at a comparatively lower cost.

If you are looking for the most in-expensive tour in Tibet, Join our Tibet group tour. We offer Tibet group tour for seven different tour route in Tibet, and our trips are much cheaper than other tour operators.

Here are some pieces of information to help you to travel to Tibet on a budget

Tibet entry permit for Visit Tibet on a Budget

Many travel agencies would charge you more than 800 RMB for the permit. In reality, the permit is free of cost. We provide a free travel permit service for anyone joining us for the Tibet travel tours services.

Hotels

There is a wide range of hotel choices you can choose from. The very basic one is the dormitories in Lhasa and family guest houses in other regions. The cost of the dormitories would not be more than 100 RMB and the stay in the family guest house.

The most popular grade of Hotels is the three stars. There are many famous Tibetan owned Three starred hotels in the old Lhasa district; the most popular among frequent visitors are Kyichu Hotel, Yak Hotel. The very reasonable price for those three stars hotels is 300 RMB to 280 RMB. If you would like to stay in a Tibetan hotel for the Tibet experience, I would recommend you to choose the House of Shambhala and Shambhala Palace. But the stay at Shambhala would come at a higher price than those three-star hotels.

If you are looking for hotels with better star grading, you can choose from St Regis to Shangrila Lhasa. But for my knowledge better star grading doesn’t mean a better service.

Vehicles

It is mandatory for every international visitor to travel to Tibet need to have a private tour cab. Travelers can use public transport only in Lhasa. Besides this traveller must have a private car. You can identify the tourist vehicles with the plate numbers. All the tour cab has a third letter L. which means Lvyou in mandarin, and it intends to travel. The local travel agency can add some extra value to the price per kilometer. The ideal cost per kilometer for the cab would be 4.5RMB ( for the low season; November to February), 5.0 RMB ( for the average season; April to June),  to 4.5 RMB ( for the High season; July to October) for the Mini Van and vehicles with more seats would even higher.

It would be brilliant to ask if your travel agency could provide you with the number of kilometers you will be covering a specific day, and you can consider 100 km per day for the cab for in city tour day. Please remember almost all the travel agencies would add 100 km even if you are taking off day. You will need to state not to include the cab on a free day. If you are taking free days outside Lhasa, travelers need to understand the drivers.

The guide Fees

The tour guide plays a significant role in the effectiveness of the tour. According to the practice of many travel agencies, the tour guide performs a sole responsibility in operating the trip. Those are not the right practice. But many do. Almost all the English speaking tour guides would cost you 500 RMB per day. The most agency would ask you to pay higher. There are some travel agencies which would pay a better to the tour guide, and they have the best of the best tour guide in Tibet. Ideally, the cost of an excellent tour guide would cost you 500 RMB per day.

The best way to find an excellent tour guide is the recommendation from friends and family members how might have visited Tibet already. Maybe they can refer an excellent guide for you. The pointer: inquire about a travel agency and book the tour with them and ask them you need a specific tour guide. In this way, you will have the best of the best trip in Tibet.

Tibet Group tour is best to visit Tibet on a Budget

Then join in a group tour is a prevalent practice among international travelers. Many travel agency does provide a group tour. But be aware of seeing the maximum numbers of group members per group. Some make a big group of more than 12 members per group. The ideal group tours you can join in the group with a max of eight members.

Following are our group tours 

1. 17 days Tour from Lhasa to Guge kingdom and Mount Kailash 
2. 15 days Tour from Lhasa to Mt Kailash
3. Eight days Tour from Lhasa to Mount Everest Basecamp
4. Eight days Tour from Lhasa to Nepal via Mount Everest Basecamp
5. Six days Tour from Lhasa to Shigatse
6. Four days Tour in Lhasa 

The wrong Practice and the warnings

1) Beware of Tibet tour operators based outside Tibet. 

We often meet international visitors in Coffee shops in Lhasa. Many were not all happy about the tour organized by the travel company outside Tibet. There are many travel websites and travel agencies from outside offering tours to Tibet. Many of them have a desirable price. But what they do in reality is they are not physically present in Tibet. They would sell the group to an unprofessional low profile tour company in Lhasa. This is why you will not get what you have been promised.  The nightmares are a very ill skilled tour guide and the hotel which does not guarantee you.

2) The poor skilled tour guide

Every year we would meet foreign travellers at some tourist attraction requesting me if it is OK to come with my group to the attraction. The reason is the guide would not know any things about the specific attraction and their guide could not even speak understandable English.

3) Please remember travellers needs to Understand the facilities in Tibet.

Every traveller needs to understand what kind of facilities there would be used clearly. Some regions of Tibet do not have a kind of facilities; you might think it should be. The best tour company in Tibet could offer you the options you can choose from. We often send the links to the Hotels and the picture of the cab and the guide. I usually make sure the clients have very proper connections with the guide before the tour. It is extra but very helpful when I introduce the guide and let the guide and client interact for some time before coming to Tibet.

4) please remember the cheaper tour doesn’t mean better.   

Many websites tell people to go to the travel agency which is offering a cheaper tour as they would be more likely local. But my experience tells me completely contrary. My experiences are the local travel agency would give you a very reasonable tour price. Since there are located in Tibet and they would have a very good understanding of the local price. There are some people writing to me to that they met only the tour guide and the driver and didn’t get the quality of service as they were promised. The best is to find a local travel agency. Ask the travel agency you will like to meet them on Skype and ask them to show a few places surrounding them. The real local travel agency would not mind showing you a bit of Tibet before you come to Tibet.

5) Don’t use any travel agency using Christian or western personal names and claiming to be a Tibetan. 

We do not have a culture of using Christian names besides having our own Tibetan name. Tibetan tour operators would never use any other name besides their birth name. If you find any travel agency using Christian names, there are not Tibetan, and they are most likely not located in Tibet.

If you have questions and need my suggestions. Please feel free to write to me even if you are not using my service. Write to me at info@itibettravel.com.

If you want to visit Tibet on a Budget, I can help you arrange it; please write to me at losal@itibettravel.com