We really wanted to travel from Nepal to Tibet on our own and without a tour group. After getting lots of wrong information and hearing many bad stories about it in Kathmandu we were really surprised at how easily it worked out.

Here's how we did it:

We got our visas in Islamabad/Pakistan (one to four working days, depending on the fee you pay) although you can also easily get one in Delhi as long as you don't say you want to go to Tibet. There is a daily bus that runs directly from Kathmandu to Kodari on the border; we bought our tickets one hour before the bus departed. We stayed the night in Kodari although we could have crossed the border the same day. Every morning there is a passenger truck from Kodari to the Chinese border post nine km uphill at Zhangmu. We had no problems crossing the border. You do need an alien travel permit' for all places on the way to Lhasa except Shigatse. There are plenty of checkposts on the way, so make sure you get the permit. They are available from an office about 100 meters uphill on the right-hand side; look for a red sign with gold lettering. It cost Y20 and took about 10 minutes to organise.

If you want to hitch you have to go to the upper section of the town as there are only Nepalese trucks in the border area and these go right back to Nepal. We hired seats from a land cruiser in a little travel agency in Zhangmu Hotel. Watch out for the sign. We did the trip in two days with a stopover in Shigatse where we took time out to visit the monastery. The first day was hard as we travelled for 10 hours. The mountain road behind Shigatse that leads up to Lhasa has been sealed, so this section took us only 3 1/2 hours.

Sonja Reinke & Martin Kolditz - Germany