HIGHER and HIGHER: Chapter VI

LHASA: SPIRITUALITY ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD

In Lhasa, the Haier Brothers find the spiritual connections to their journey run much deeper than they imagined. They take this new found inspiration and use it to help them fulfill their vision: bike to Mt. Everest, the highest point in the world.




Chapter VI FAQ:

1. Do you really need a visa to get into Lhasa, Tibet?
Let us help make a clarification. It's not a visa you need, but a Tibet Tourism Bureau permit. Travel agencies can help attain the permit, which is expensive, and will probably attach a guide as a package. Agencies claim the Chinese government requires tourists have a guide. This is somewhat bogus. To their credit, the guides often can be very knowledgeable, but for our purposes a guide was unnecessary. We were just trying to prepare for the bike trip. We asked for a refund since we didn't need the guide, but the travel agency didn't want to hand us back a few hundred dollars claiming they were responsible for us. Really, the agency couldn't have cared less if we never showed up for a guided tour. Knowing this, we changed our story. We lied and said we were leaving Tibet straightaway. The travel agent then said we needed a train ticket to prove it, but we demanded they just give us the money. After a lot of hemming and hawing, the agent agreed and paid cash. From there, we had our permits and no guide. On a side note, our permits were never examined, not once.

However, there's more to it. Besides the Tibet Tourism Permit, there's another called the Alien Travel Permit that you must purchase if you want to venture most places outside Lhasa. You must go to the Public Security Bureau to obtain the permit. However, guidebooks say the Lhasa PSB won't grant individuals a permit, they must go through an agency which will attach a guide. In a town further up the road (you don't need an ATP to go), called Shigatse, guidebooks say the PSB office there will grant individuals permits. But hold on, we met two foreigners who own a rafting shop in Tibet. Contrary to the advice in guidebooks such as Lonely Planet, they said the PSB in Shigatse wasn't as kind to foreigners, at least not anymore, probably because they felt they were being taken advantage of.

The real point is, these same foreigners laughed off the idea of dealing with these permits if we were riding bikes. On a bike, if you do get stopped by the police, they'll likely just fine you. We in fact were stopped by the police at a check point on the road, but they didn't even ask for a permit. Moreover, they explained that because we were on bikes, we were welcome to continue on our journey. If you want to travel freely in Tibet and disappear into China policy limbo, sit on a bike.