October 03, Fri: Depart USA

October 04, Sat: Arrive in Chengdu. 1650 ft. (-/-/-). Overnight in Garden City Hotel, Chengdu.
We will arrive in Chengdu in the evening and will be met at the airport and transferred to Garden City Hotel. (4 star hotel).

October 05, Sun: Chengdu (B/L/D). Overnight in Garden City Hotel, Chengdu.
After breakfast we will visit the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Center, which has been created and imitates the pandas' natural habitat so the bears have the best possible environment for rearing and breeding. Giant pandas, red pandas,
black-necked cranes, white storks as well as over 20 species of rare animals are bred here throughout the year. In the afternoon we will visit the old city of Chengdu with its traditional buildings and tea houses. Here we will have the opportunity to enjoy one of local tea houses.

Lunch and dinner will be in selected local Chinese restaurants.

October 06, Mon: Fly to Tibet 12,000 ft (B/L/D). Overnight in Kyichu Hotel.
After breakfast we drive to the airport for our 3 hour flight to Lhasa’s Gonggar airport. We will meet our Tibetan guide and driver/s and drive to Lhasa city that will take us about 45 minutes.

On the way to Lhasa we will visit the Dolma Lhakhang, built by Jowo Atisha, a Bengali Buddhist master, in the mid-eleventh century. The temple is dedicated to Arya Tara, the female buddha who he regarded as his main meditation deity. This site therefore is regarded as one of the foremost Tara power places in Tibet.

We will check in to our hotel and rest for most of day. Lunch will be in the hotel.
In the early evening we will we will have an optional outing to the Barkhor Market and walk around the Jokhang Temple along with pilgrims that have come from different parts of Tibet.

October 07, Tue: Lhasa. Jokhang & Barkhor 12,000 ft (B/L). Overnight in Kyichu Hotel.
After breakfast we will visit the Jokhang Temple. The Jokhang is regarded as Tibet’s oldest temple, and was built by King Songtsen Gampo in approx 650 for his Nepali wife Bhrikuti, who is regarded as an incarnation of White Tara. It is considered to be the primary seat in Central Asia of the female buddhas, and also of all dakinis. We will find a quite spot on the roof and meditate.

After Jokhang we will explore Barkhor. The word Barkhor refers to the middle of the three concentric holy circuits around the Jokhang. The Barkhor Circuit runs through the heart of the old city where life has changed little over the centuries and it gives you a curious sensation of having slipped through time. It is an area unrivalled in Tibet for its fascinating combination of deep spirituality and market economics. This is both the spiritual heart of the holy city and the main commercial district, being the center of Tibetan capital's trade for centuries.

Rest of the day is free so you can rest and acclimatize.

October 08, Wed: Lhasa. Potala Palace & Chuzang Ani Gompa 12,000 ft (B/L). Overnight in Kyichu Hotel.
In the morning we will visit the Potala, traditional home of the Dalai Lamas and their monastery. Potala Palace has been the focus of pilgrims to Lhasa for centuries. It is the cardinal landmark and a structure of massive proportion. This symbol of Tibet is an architectural gem. King Songtsen Gampo built the red section of it in the mid-seventh century, but it was the great Fifth Dalai Lama who made it the grand structure we see today. It became the home of all Dalai Lamas since him, as well as the seat of his private monastery, Namgyal Dratsang, and also the seat of the Tibetan government. The Chinese Army of Red Guards protected it during the Cultural Revolution, and as a result many of its chapels and treasures are intact, virtually unchanged since the 17th century.

In the afternoon we will visit Chuzang Ani Gompa. Ani means nun in Tibetan. Built around a meditation cave used by Tibetan mystics over the centuries, in the mid- 15th century, it became a practice hermitage for six female disciples of Lama Tsongkhapa. They transformed it into a nunnery, and it has remained as such to the present day.

October 09, Thu: Lhasa. Phabongkha 13,000 ft (B/L). Overnight in Kyichu Hotel.
Phabongkha is about 15 miuntes drive from Lhasa and offers a wonderful view of the city of Lhasa. Songsten Gampo meditated here for three years and later Padmasambhava, Atisha and Je Tsongkhapa have all meditated here in this cave. The monastery is build on top of a rock that houses the cave. Left of Phabongkha is a sky burial site . Our hike today will follow a pilgrim’s trail with view of Lhasa city.

From Phabongkha we will walk up the mountain to Tashi Choling Monastery, and over to both Chuzang Nunnery and Sera Monastery. Afterwards we drive back to Lhasa.

Anyone not wanting to take this walk can drive back from Phabongkha meet the group either back in town or else at Sera.

October 10, Fri: Lhasa. Drikung 13,000 ft (B/L). Overnight in Kyichu Hotel.
Drikung is one of the most outstanding monasteries of the region east of Lhasa. It is the greatest of all Drikung monasteries and has a fascinating and extensive complex. Above the monastery complex is a sacred site used for sky-burials.

We will have lunch in Drikung Guest House and then visit Terdrom. This dakini site was made famous by Yeshe Tsogyal, Tibet’s first woman to attain enlightenment in one lifetime. Since then it has been a constant source of inspiration and blessings to pilgrims.

Total driving time: 6 hours.

October 11, Sat: Lhasa. Namtso, the Space Lake 14,000 ft (B/L).Overnight in Kyichu Hotel.
After an early breakfast we will drive to Namtso, or Space Lake. This is perhaps the most spectacular and sacred lake in Central Tibet. The cave complexes on the mountains ringing its shores have been used by meditators for centuries. The temples here were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, but miniatures of several of them have been rebuilt. The region is one of the strongholds of the Bon, or pre-Buddhist shamanic peoples of Tibet.

Total driving time: 7 hours.

October 12, Sun: Lhasa Free day. 12,000 ft. (B/-/-). Overnight in Kyichu Hotel.
Free day in Lhasa.

October 13, Mon: Drive to Gyantse 12,800 ft. (B/L/D).Overnight in Jian Zhang Hotel.
Drive to Gyantse via the Turquoise Lake. We will have a lunch here just below the Kamba La pass with a good view of the lake. After checking in our hotel we will visit the Kumbum Choten (Stupa Complex of 100,000 Buddhas), popularly known as “The Jewel of Tibet,” it is a seven story building with seventy-seven small chapels, each painted from floor to ceiling with buddhas, bodhisattvas and mandalas. The adjoining monastery, Palkhor Chodey, was the childhood home of Tsongkhapa’s chief disciple Khedrup Jey.

Total driving time approximately 6 hours.

October 14, Tue: Drive to Shigatse. Full Moon. 13000 ft. (B/L/D). Overnight Manasarovar Hotel.
The drive to Shigatse this morning will take us two hours. Full moon day in Tashi Lhunpo, the monastery built by the First Dalai Lama in 1447 and associated with Mme. Blavatsky’s personal teachers. Here we will join a crowd of pilgrims from all over Central Tibet and push our way enthusiastically through the dozens of chapels, including the one with the relics from the First Dalai Lama’s cremation pyre.

Total driving time approximately 2 hours.

October 15, Wed: Drive to Sakya. 13,800 ft. (B/L/D). Overnight in Sakya Hotel.
The town of Sakya was the base of the Sakya School of Tibetan Buddhism, and the great monastery there served as the official seat of the Sakya Trizin, or head of the school. The monastery has an exquisite spiritual energy.

Total driving time approximately 3 hours.

October 16, Thu: Drive to Rongbuk 16,400 ft. (B/L/D). Overnight at hotel.
Although the Western World thinks of Everest as a mountain-climbing place, for Tibetans it is one of “The Five Healing Sisters,” and is an important source of the natural healing and medicinal systems of India, Nepal and Tibet. It is closely linked to the female buddha Tsering Lhamo, or “Goddess of Healing.” The Tibetan name for Everest, Chomolungma, is the name of a female healing goddess, with Everest serving as her portal to humankind.

We will visit Everest Base Camp for views of the sacred mountain, and on our descent will stop to meditate in the Guru Rinpoche Cave. Guru Rinpoche entered Tibet via the pass to Everest’s eastern ridge, and this is the first cave he consecrated in Tibet. Four hundred years later, Tibet’s great Yogi Milarepa made an extensive meditation retreat here.

Total driving time to Rongbuk is approximately 5 hours.

We will stay overnight in the hotel below Rongbuk Monastery. This hotel is clean and reasonably comfortable, but none of the rooms has an attached bathroom or toilet.

October 17, Fri: Drive to Kodari, Nepal . 5,600 ft. (B/L/D). Overnight in The Last Resort.
Today is your last day in Tibet. After breakfast we drive back towards the old Tingri where we will stop for lunch. After Lalung La (16,600 ft) it is a downhill drive till we reach Kodari (5,500 ft) the Nepali border town. This a most spectacular drive, with rapid changes in landscape and vegetation.

We will exit Tibet in Zhangmu and drive to the Friendship bridge. Here we bid farewell to our Tibetan guide and drivers and cross into Kodari, Nepal. After border formalities we drive about 30 minutes to The Last Resort.

Total driving time approximately 8 hours.

October 18, Sat: Drive to Kathmandu . 4000 ft. (B/L/D). Overnight in Yak & Yeti Hotel.
On our way to Kathmandu we will stop for lunch in the ancient city of Bhaktapur. Bhaktapur is the capital of one of the three ancient kingdoms of the Kathmandu Valley, and we will visit its Durbar Square, which, although larger than its counterpart in Kathmandu, has fewer temples due to an earthquake in 1934. We will also visit the Nyatapola Temple, which at 98 ft-. height, is not only the highest temple in the valley but also one of the best examples of traditional Nepali architecture.

We drive to Kathmandu and check in to our hotel. Total driving time 4 hours.

For those with the energy, after checking into our hotel we will visit the ancient Swayambhunath Stupa and temple complex to the west of the city. This stupa is said to be 2000 years old, and is one of the world's most glorious Buddhist monuments. It is situated on a hill to the west of Kathmandu.

October 19, Sun: Kathmandu . (B/L/D). Overnight in Yak & Yeti Hotel.
In the morning we will visit Boudhanath, the religious center for Tibetan refugees living in Nepal. The fabulous stupa here marks the sight of 6th and 7th century religious exchanges between Nepal & Tibet.

We will also visit Pashupatinath temple, holiest Hindu site in Nepal that dates to 450 B.C.

We will have lunch in the ancient Lalitpur (Patan) Square. This city was the traditional Buddhist kingdom in the valley, and still boasts the greatest Buddhist artists in Nepal, with the best statue makers in the Buddhist world. After lunch people can walk through some of the art shops and buy gifts for friends back home, as well as wonderful Buddhist paintings and statues. These generally cost a fifth of what they do in the west when purchased directly from the artist outlets.

October 20, Mon: Fly to USA. (B).
Transfer to airport for onward flight to USA.

October 21, Tue: US Arrival.
Arrive in USA.