PERMIT SITUATION UPDATE

The lopsided train demand just seems kind of crazy to me, presumably the people who take the train in will fly out (or I guess go on to Nepal). Don't they realize that it's much easier to take the train the other way? You see the same stuff. And you get to see it before you get all cranky from having been on a train for 24 hours. In June 2007 I was able to go to the station in Lhasa and get a ticket for the next day, my train wasn't full, and judging from the crowd in the waiting room, I was the only foreigner on it. I'm sure I would have had trouble getting a ticket in Chengdu, etc.
People going to on to Nepal have an excuse, but for everybody else - just take it the other way and even things out a little!

klc123 - nothing of your 2007 experience would appear to be relevant in 2009. The issue is clearly that companies are willing to buy up large numbers of train tickets on speculation that they will find foreigners to pay high prices. Of course, they have to charge these high prices to recoup what they laid out to purchase all these tickets to control the market.

This is exactly what happened in Peru on the Inca trail. Eventually the government stepped in preventing compnies from buying spaces to hike the Inca trail without a passport number. Now the reverse happens. People cancel their Inca trail reservations and the travel agencies are stuck with spaces that they cannot resell.

Ruth

I understand that agencies are buying up blocks of tickets, etc and creating problems. My point is just that the vast majority of advertised tours that include the train have itineraries involving the train to Lhasa and a flight out, and the majority of people who inquire about the train ask about taking the train to Lhasa, not from Lhasa. In a quick search (admittedly not thorough), I did not see a single tour itinerary advertising flying into Lhasa and taking the train out. To me, the focus on only taking the train to Tibet is strange.
But this is getting pretty off-topic...

klc, everbrite,
Is there evidence for agencies buying up tickets, or is it just rumour? I was in Lhasa in July, entered by plane from Chengdu, and got a train ticket locally, ordered by my travel agent without extra charge. I got the train I wanted, the T221, without trouble booked 2 days in advance. I did not hear that there was any trouble getting tickets.

Aqua...you've missed the point of the whole discussion here.....getting train tickets OUT of Lhasa is relatively easy. Getting training tickets IN is the problem. There's plenty of evidence...just call up any smaller independent travel agency in Lhasa or Xining (that is not connected to CITS or similar govt. run big agencies) and ask them? Or whip down to the train station in Beijing or Chengdu and check out the line ups!

Everbrite.....its actually not so much foreigners that are paying high prices.....it is mostly domestic travellers. Foreigners make up a very small % of train travelers. (less than 5%)

It is a bit of a weird phenomenon. I suspect a lot of travelers are migrant workers and families of folks in Lhasa. It is school holidays right now so there is a huge amount of movement to Lhasa from Lhasa families with kids studying in Mainland China. There is also a somewhat misguided idea that taking the train into Lhasa is a really good way to acclimitise. To be honest it really doesn't make that much difference to an extra day hanging in Lhasa.

Even when we went to Lhasa from Chengdu in April a couple of years ago, you needed to be flexible with dates as train tickets then were hard to get.

Just to add my own experience of trying (and failing) to get a train ticket from Chengdu to Lhasa:

I went to the train station myself 8 days before I wanted the ticket - when I told the ticket guy I wanted to go to Lhasa he laughed at me! Unsurprisingly there weren't any left, although I did hear one couple recently went to the station 2 days before they wanted to go and somehow managed to get tickets, but I think that's a very lucky exception.

If you book your tour through Sim's, they offer to try and get a ticket on the black market for you if they can't at the train station. They reckoned it would be about 300 RMB extra but that it might be more. But they can only do this the day before travel, when some tickets are returned apparently. And they're understandably not so keen to help if you've booked your tour with someone else. Tibetan Connections also say they'll get you a ticket from Xining if you book with them, although again you'll have to pay whatever extra the black market wants.

My tourguide (Tibet Cycle) found someone offering tickets for 500 RMB commission (i.e. 1200 RMB total for a hard sleeper), but by the time I called her she'd already sold the tickets.Some of the expensive online ticket agencies also advertise tickets to Lhasa for around 1300 RMB, but none of the ones I contacted could find any tickets either.

So I've now given up and getting the plane instead...

Edited by: fredmart

Hello, i am thinking of flying into Chengdu from Kathmandu in early September then taking a tour from Chengdu to Tibet, however i want to travel into mainland China for 2 and a half months after visiting Tibetand end up eventually in Beijing where i'll depart from. Will my Chinese visa be revoked if i get a Tibetan permit for a tour of Tibet in Chengdu? If so would it be better to fly to Beijing from Kathmandu and do a work my way down before eventually doing a tour of Tibet and returning to Beijing from Lhasa by train? Thanks in advance, Alex

Seeing as Tibet is part of China, why would your visa be revoked?? You've probably got more chances of finding other travellers to make up a group from Chengdu, though.

Don't worry.....you're Chinese visa will not be revoked when you get a Tibet entry permit. Just make sure you're Chinese visa is valid for your intended length of stay in China including your time in Tibet. Tibet is a province of China. Also....remember that you cannot get a "normal" Chinese tourist visa in Kathmandu so make sure you have your Chinese visa before you arrive in Kathmandu.