Tibet Visa Guide

A Tibet Travel Permit (Tibet Visa) is NOT a visa or any other kind of stamp that goes in your passport. It is a completely separate document that is issued by the Tibet Tourism Bureau. ... Without a Tibet Travel Permit, you cannot enter Tibet. You will not even be permitted to board a flight or a train to Lhasa.

For all of you who need to get to Tibet travel permit for your lifetime journey in Tibet, we offer the most professional and easy-to-understand guideline to get to the permit successfully.

Foreigners only need Chinese Visa to visit Beijing, Shanghai or other cities in China, but going to Tibet is very different. Although most places in Tibet are open to foreigners, the Chamdo Region and some of the frontier areas are restricted. To travel to those areas, they must have Tibet Travel Permit issued by the government of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). If they want to visit border areas like Mount Everest and Mount Kailash, they must have an additional permission from other government agencies of the TAR, such as the foreign affairs office, the public security department, the armed forces frontier corps and the military region.

All these can be entrusted to a travel agency. Even so, it is sometimes not easy, as the Tibet visa policy and requirements keep changing. Travelers always wonder whether they can successfully secure the Permit. Therefore, we are giving some suggestions below. Hopefully, they can help people better understand the Tibet visa policies and the Travel Permit application procedures.

How to Get Tibet Visa

Follow the simple steps, or following the guideline by answering few questions, you will find it is not as complicated as you thought to get your Tibet Visa.

Step 1: Make Sure You Have a Valid Passport and Chinese Visa

Your Passport and Chinese Visa are required for Tibet Travel Permit application. Make sure you already have them. If you don’t have a Chinese Visa and plan to enter Tibet from Kathmandu, Nepal, you need to apply for the Group Visa through Chinese Embassy at Kathmandu.

Step 2: Confirm Your Travel Itinerary and Book the Tour with Us

Since the permit can be only applied through the local travel agency who will offer the full service for you in Tibet, you need to book the tour in Tibet with us.

The entry city and the places you go will be shown on the permit, you need to confirm your itinerary before application.

Step 3: Email Us the Required Documents

The copies of your passport and Chinese Visa are the basic documents needed. Some other documents may be required if you travel with student visa or working visa.

Step 4: Get Your Tibet Permit before Heading to Tibet

We will deliver your permit from Lhasa to your address (usually to your hotels in mainland China) as soon as we received it from the Bureau.

Tibet Travel Permit News Updated on Dec.8th, 2019

Nowadays, it becomes much easier to get Tibet travel permit for international tourists. The processing only takes 8-9 working days, the shortest duration since 2008. But we still recommend you'd better apply for it 20 days before heading to Tibet.

In the past days of 2019, we've successfully handled as many as 6,000 Tibet permit applications, without a single failure.