Pre-trip: Transportation

The Latvia couple would fly from Europe to Chengdu and spend a couple of days traveling near Chengdu (which I recommended them to go to Emei Shan and Leshan). Then they would take a train from Chengdu on 8 Sep and arrive in Lhasa on 10 Sep. It would take them 2 days on the train ride. Then, they would fly out from Lhasa to Chengdu on 24 Sep and fly back to Europe on 25 Sep.

If you choose to fly in to Lhasa, the original Tibet permit is required. If you go in by train, a copy of the permit is fine. It takes 15-20 days to issue the permit. In case we chose to fly in, we would have to pay another 180 RMB for the agency to mail us the original Tibet permit before our departure date. I didn't know why it was so expensive. Perhaps they had to send it via express service.

I discussed with Jeff about the train. He was actually planning to take the train from Beijing to Lhasa which would take 3 days. According to Yowangdu website, the elevation in Beijing and even in Chengdu would be too low for us to acclimatize. I suggested that we should fly to Xining a few days earlier and travel around Xining before taking a train from Xining on 9 Sep and then arrive in Lhasa on 10 Sep. 

I was concerned about the train ticket. From what I read, it was difficult to get one and in some cases, the price was really expensive. The couple asked us whether we wanted the travel agency to buy the train ticket for us. Jeff said that we should be able to book the train ticket from the website on our own and it would be a lot cheaper.

The travel agency asked us for the dates that we were going to enter and leave Lhasa and also the transportation mode (train or plane). They had to put the information in the permit. We decided to arrive in Lhasa by train (from Xining) on 10 Sep and leave Lhasa on 24 Sep by plane. 

At first, I even thought about flying from Lhasa to Xi'an, going to the Terracotta Army site and hiking to Huashan and then taking the train back to Hangzhou. While Jeff was planning to fly from Lhasa to Chengdu perhaps on the same flight with the couple and then travel around Chengdu. He was thinking about going to Emei Shan or Jiuzhaigou (which I already went to both places and they were awesome!). After discussing with Jeff, we thought about spending a couple of days traveling in Qinghai before coming back home on 29 Sep. So, our rough plan went like this...

6 Sep (evening): arrive in Xining 
7-9 Sep: travel around Xining
9 Sep (evening): take train to Lhasa
10 Sep: arrive in Lhasa
11-23 Sep: go with the tour in Tibet
24 Sep: fly out of Lhasa to somewhere
25-29 Sep: travel around Qinghai
29 Sep (evening): fly back to Hangzhou

Qinghai was never in my to-go list. My main destinations in China were Yunnan (went there twice), Sichuan (went there twice), and Xinjiang (never been there). I never heard anything about Qinghai before. "Where could we go in Qinghai?", I asked myself.