Attention! Not Only March Will Tibet Be Closed, but also May will be tense

Tibet Tour Permit will be more difficult to obtain next year in Tibet, not only will be closed in March, but also April and May will become more sensitive and tense, check out here at http://budgettibettour.com/travel-news/Not-Only-March-Will-Tibet-Be-Closed-next-year.html

my recommendation is to forget either side of march, april and may...actually I cannot imagine why anyone would choose to travel to that area anymore , it would not be that important in most peoples lives , who would need to go through such a permit application process...actually tourism in tibet is going through a death ( at least for foreign tourists) ......a chronic ailment of which as we know chronic diseases are the most difficult to have an effect on...just a slow process....

but then foreign tourism will now never be a substantial market in comparison to the local tourists from other parts of china...so perhaps the agenda is actually that.. and then there is really no need to hawk for foreign tourist business.anymore....
as I advised a friend " get out of the guide game, go into construction"

Yes indeed......."the agenda is actually that."

Jeez, lhasalb, brighten up mate before you top yourself!
lets take a closer look, shall we?

"actually I cannot imagine why anyone would choose to travel to that area anymore , it would not be that important in most peoples lives"

Are you joking? Tourism is the biggest industry on Earth, pretty much, and in case you haven't done much of it, most of the world is going down real fast, due to population growth, deforestation, war zones, cctv cameras, terrorism, loss of natural habitat, high expense, loss of cultural authenticity...I could go on with pollution and overcrowding in all major 'destinations' (over a million tourists walk the weary streets of London each day of the year) and nature 'attractions' like the Khumbu or Patagonia (which gets 200,000 'visitors' a year and is in gridlock most of the time, but you get my drift. It's my definition of travel hell.

But wait - there are places that do not suffer that fate - gee, one of them is really beautiful, has no foreigners crawling over it like so many ants, and has a millenium old civilisation, culture pretty much intact outside major centres; that's right, it's called Tibet! Why would anybody go there, avoid all the above-mentioned issues, and instead have to fill out a few forms and obey a few rules - who indeed!

The 'locals', chinese tourists, are lucky to get 1-2 weeks off their hard-working jobs a year, and they spend almost all time in Lhasa, a chinese city in another land if ever there was one. Tibet is the size of western Europe, however.

I have never seen more than maybe 20 westerners anywhere outside the node cities in the Himalaya, whether it be Lhasa, Leh, Padum, Karimabad or KTM/Pokhara. Most in those places are just groovers chilling out in an alt destination for a few days or a week, bit players in a moveable freak show...

Last time I was in West Tibet you could count the no. of tourists on one hand each day...to me this is heaven-sent. Plenty of friendly and gracious Tibetans though.

The Chinese are changing things rapidly and not all for the worst; and what goes around comes around, times have always changed. You could be living in the 1950s in the TAR...and really have something to complain about.

cheers, I really mean that, cheer up...Philip

So, does that mean April will be impossible? I was planning a trip from Chengdu-Nepal sometime around April 2011. It would be such a waste.

There is nothing more insidious or fake than someone telling someone else to 'cheer up' when there is no 'non cheer' there ,...your whole spiel reads a little 'forced 'to me...

..I don't think you have actually travelled very much in tibetan areas or TAR , if you think that local chinese tourists only stick to Lhasa..it is the western foreigners who end up plodding along a well worn limited route to the border....

...and I cannot understand if you read negativity so easily into comments then why you don't interpret "most of the world is going down real fast, due to population growth, deforestation, war zones, cctv cameras, terrorism, loss of natural habitat, high expense, loss of cultural authenticity...I could go on with pollution and overcrowding " as anything less ....

if travelling to Tibet is really very important in most peoples lives ..then I will be eating tsampa for the rest of mine then....

Hello, invicta27 , no one says impossible to have a tibet tour from March to May next year, it is still possible to travle to tibet during this period of time but application of permit will become difficult then, i believe some portion of tourists can still do that while the majority will be denied. Compared with March and May( very sentive month next year) , April is relatively easy, but still depends on how situation goes next year...

I doubt that Chinese authorities will impose restrictions on travel to Tibet not only in April and May but even in March. Situation in Tibet seemed to me totally under control when I visited earlier this month so if nothing unpleasant happens before March tourists may visit Tibet. Anyway the number of foreign tourists at this time of the year is not significant and authorities can unofficially reduce the number of issued TTB permits without any explanation.

Have you not read any of the above posts? These guys are usually on the mark when it comes to the nonissuing of permits. March especially has a history of nonissuance of permits. The number of tourists at this time of the year has no bearing on those months next year.

Hi,

maybe March could be somewhat problematic, but the authorities will try not to close down Tibet unnecessarily for long period. My exoperience (but more my contacts in Lhasa) tell me that it will be nothing especially, except there is unusually high tension which is unlikely because the authorities learned from 2008 very much how to control communications.

Serious news about any (if) closure will be alvailable around mid February at earliest. To speculate now might just be a fine way to promote a company here as long as no other one reports anything similar

Navyo

Amdo Tibet is looking more likely for me every day for my next trip!