DOCUMENTS, RESERVATIONS AND TICKETS ON WHATSAPP
DOCUMENTS, RESERVATIONS AND TICKETS ON DRIVE
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From 06 to 23 October 2025
Summary Itinerary
Clicking on the days of travel in the summary itinerary will take you to the detailed itinerary for that day and vice versa clicking on the day in the detailed itinerary will return you to the summary itinerary. In the detailed itinerary, in addition to the images and description of the days, we also have the day of the month and the week
Main Program
Detailed Itinerary
Main Program
Flights
Going to the airport probably for the flight this morning depending on your city, route and flight combination we will see together what will work best for your arrival! Guilherme will be in touch from your arrival to the airport until your arrival in Kathmandu. Have a great flight!
Arrival
Boudhnath
Welcome to Nepal! From the airport runway, weather permitting, you can already see the mountains surrounding the valley. All the details about your arrival are explained on this page Arrival in Kathamndu: here. Which we will have already carefully reviewed together in our travel briefing. With your visa and luggage in hand, the group will be met by Guilherme at the airport. Those arriving before or after the group's flight will be met by our local representative who will be waiting for you with a Chörten sign. In this case, our representative will accompany you to the hotel or wherever Guilherme is with the group so that we can enjoy this afternoon in the Tibetan neighborhood of our hotel.
Around the great stupa (Tib: chörten) of Boudhanath, full of monasteries, we will find nuns, monks and lay Tibetans, sometimes great masters, doing their koras (circumambulations). Turning the famous prayer wheels with millions of Om Mani Padma Hungs, reciting mantras and making offerings of lamps mainly in the late afternoon and early morning. In addition to doing our koras, we will enjoy one of the cafés or restaurants around the stupa to observe and assimilate a little of this ancient culture.
Swayambunath
Kathmandu Durbar Square
Thamel
Boudhnath
After a well-deserved rest from the trip to Nepal, breakfast to start our day in the Kathmandu Valley!
We will begin our visits with a short walk in the region of the second largest stupa in the valley, Swayambunath (translation: self-arisen). Legend has it that the hill where the stupa is located was where the bodhisattva Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, picked a lotus flower after emptying the lake in what is now the Kathmandu Valley. Weather permitting, we will have a view of the entire city. We will make our koras around the stupa and visit its small monasteries.
From Swayambu we will head to Kathmandu's Durbar Square (Palace Square) where a small living goddess, the Kumari, lives. The Durbar Squares of the Kathmandu Valley were built by kings who were heirs of the Malla dynasty, from the 12th to the 18th centuries, which, fortunately for us, rivaled each other in architectural beauty. There are numerous temples to various Hindu gods around the palace. We will then walk to the travellers' neighborhood in Kathmandu, Thamel, with numerous good restaurants, mountaineering shops, Nepalese crafts, and bookshops, where you can have a good meal and, if you need to, buy some clothes, for example, for Tibet.
After our visits, walks and lunch, we will return to our Tibetan neighborhood around the Boudhanath stupa.
kopan
Patan
Today we will visit at least one of the main monasteries in the Kathmandu Valley, which will give us a good opportunity to learn a little about the projects of these great masters. Kopan is the monastery of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, where several hundred monks of all ages live. It is an important study center for Sherpas, often from the Everest region, and foreigners from all over the world.
We will then head to Patan’s charming Durbar Square, famous for its artists and beautiful temples. There we will visit a small, very well-designed and very educational museum of Hindu and Buddhist art. Nearby, we will visit the small and beautiful Golden Temple, still used today by Nepalese Buddhists from the same clan as Buddha Sakyamuni himself. Patan has a good option for lunch, it is a good place to buy Buddhist statues (as in Boudha too), of excellent quality, and to walk through these medieval streets and temples.
Free afternoon in bookstores, cafes, Buddhist art shops, craft shops, mountain clothing and equipment, stupas, temples or monasteries in the well-known Patan, Thamel or Boudhnath, as each traveller prefers.
Flight
After breakfast we head to Kathmandu airport for our international flight to Chengdu.
Arriving early at the airport to get window seats, if the weather is clear, we will literally pass by 5 of only 14 mountains in the world over 8000 m / 26000 ft in altitude. Guilherme will show you what they are.
Arriving in Chengdu, we will head to our hotel in the city, which is approximately 1 hour from the airport. Dinner suggestion: typical Chengdu food, which consists of vegetable skewers, etc., which we will cook in a pan on the fire in the center of our table, with the seasonings of the regional cuisine.
Pandas
Siguniangshan Mountain
We will begin our road trip into Tibet! It was a very interesting experience to start our trip in the capital of one of the most traditional regions of China, Sichuan, and little by little we entered this little-visited region of eastern Tibet, called Kham in Tibetan.
At the beginning of our day, we will make two brief visits to learn a little more about the local culture. We will visit a traditional temple next to our hotel and then we will make a brief visit to a museum about the culture of Chengdu. We will then continue our journey to a panda sanctuary to learn a little about their interesting history and characteristics.
From a low altitude in Chengdu at 500 m / 1600 ft, by the end of our day we will have climbed to approx. 3000 m / 11000 ft. We will have some very nice views on the way until we see Siguniang Mountain (6250 m / 20000 ft), next to the small town where we will be staying. Tomorrow morning we will take a nice and peaceful hike towards this mountain.
Check-in at our hotel and then take a light walk while we acclimatize, to eat at one of the restaurants in the small town.
Walk
Visits on the way
This morning we will take a very light walk, along a very well-maintained path, which will be a light exercise, in a very beautiful valley (first images above), with clean air, which will be a great help for our acclimatization.
After our walk, it's time to head to Bamei. On the way we will always have beautiful views, opportunities to see some yaks and probably meet the first famous khampas (Tibetans from Kham). They are known to be the cowboys of Tibet. We may encounter some nomads too. Among different monasteries typical of the region, we will visit 2 or more according to our pace. We will travel by car during our days in Kham, as when traveling in other regions of Tibet, for an average of 5 hours per day at altitudes between 3 and 4000 m / 10 and 13000 feet.
At the end of that day, with beautiful photos (for example of the mountain in the third image above) and good conversations, we checked in at our hotel and then walked to our restaurant in the small town.
Gathar Chodestery Huiyuan Gompa
Drango Gompa
Spontaneous visits along the way
We will start our day with a visit near our hotel, the first very beautiful monastery of our trip in Tibet, called Gathar Chodestery or Huiyuan Gompa. Gompa means monastery. One of its monks will introduce us to the main lakhang (main hall), tell us about its statues and the history of the monastery with the help of our local guide. Topics that will certainly lead to good conversations during our trip regarding the meanings of what we are seeing, the relationship with modern studies on emotional intelligence and neuroscience. There is a lot to talk about that is very special and interesting that regions with so much ancient knowledge like Tibet offer us.
After a special visit to Gathar Chodestery Gompa, we will continue our journey to Garze. A slightly larger city in Kham. Very beautiful views on the way, whenever the opportunity arises to have contact with the nomads on the way, we will stop. On that day we can walk a little through a very beautiful meadow, with a large statue of Guru Rinpoche next to it and a beautiful monastery ahead. There are monasteries on the way and in Garze that we will visit at our own pace. Have a good rest at the end of the day in our very good hotel (by the standards of the region).
Note: Gom can mean meditation as well as familiarization. The exact purpose of meditation is to become familiar with our already present qualities. Nothing that we need to achieve, acquire, but to identify and become familiar with what we already have within us. Pa can mean local and so this is one of the meanings of gompa.
Dzogchen Monastery
Today we will visit one of the most important monasteries in Tibet. Part of the Six Mother Monasteries of the Nyingma (the oldest) lineage of Buddhism in Tibet. Their stories, and the masters who lived and taught in them, are fundamental parts of Tibetan culture, thought and philosophy.
Dzogchen Monastery was founded in the 17th century by Dzogchen Rinpoche and is famous for its university (shedra). Among the great masters who lived and taught here, Patrul Rinpoche and Mipham Rinpoche are very important in Buddhist studies to this day. One of the most studied books in Buddhism, Words of My Perfect Teacher was written by Patrul Rinpoche in a cave just above the monastery. The area is very beautiful, with mountains and a glacier in the background, a small lake, a beautiful stupa (chörten), lakhangs (temples or ceremonial halls), monks' houses, universities, a café, and small restaurants in the village near the monastery.
If you’re up for it, we can take a walk to one of Patrul Rinpoche’s caves. If you’d rather take a walk to the cave very close to the monastery, that’s also a good option. You won’t want to leave the cave. That way, you’ll be able to enjoy a good part of your day this way.
It is common to find pilgrims, Tibetans traveling throughout Tibet, visiting the most sacred places. Tibetans, traditionally nomads, are travellers by nature. They camp, walk a lot and love a picnic with friends!
We then headed to our dinner in Dege.
Traditional Dege Printing House
Yilhun LaTso Lake
This morning we will be in what we can consider the heart and center of Kham culture, Dege. We will see pilgrims making their koras (circumambulations) around the traditional Dege printing press, and we will learn about the work of these volunteers who are dedicated to preserving Tibetan texts in this traditional and ancient way. A truly beautiful work and art.
On the way to Garze, we will visit the beautiful sacred Yilhun LaTso Lake, with its manis stones, which are stones with mantras carved on them. We will take a very pleasant, peaceful walk around a part of Yilhun LaTso.
Flight
Today we will have a very calm day. As it is always good to be careful when flying in mountainous regions, we will fly calmly this morning to Chengdu (the only flight of the day), from where we can fly to Lhasa tomorrow with safety in mind. In case of unforeseen weather conditions, which are common in these regions, we have ready-made plans up our sleeves to ensure that we continue our trip as calmly and in the best possible way. It will be a very beautiful flight over the regions we have traveled through in the last few days, full of monasteries, retreat sites and great masters.
Our hotel is located at the airport itself. We walked for 5 minutes inside the airport to our hotel. If you want to rest, I believe this will be a great opportunity to visit Lhasa in a quality way. Last year I took the subway and went to the city (it's far away / approx. 1 hour). We can think about that possibility too!
Flight
From our hotel we can now walk to check-in for our flight to Lhasa. Lhasa Airport is located between Lhasa City and Tsedang City. Today we will go to Tsedang, approx. 2h, to visit the oldest monasteries, very important in the history of Tibet.
We will take care of some travel documents. Check in at our hotel and have dinner.
Yungbulakang
Mindrolling
Samye
Tibetan mythology says that the Tibetan people emerged in Tsedang. Also linked to the history and origin of Tibetan culture, we will visit Yungbulakang, which was first a palace of King Songtsen Gampo in the 0th century. VII, became a temple and then a monastery a thousand years later. In the same small town, we will visit the very ancient Tradruk temple. Its origins occur after or just before Jokhang, in Lhasa, also in the XNUMXth century. VII.
We now continue our journey along the Yarlung Tsangpo River. Our first stop will be at the important Mindroling Monastery.
We will then continue on to the first and very important monastery built in all of Tibet, Samye. At the request of King Trisong Detsen and the Indian master Shantarakshita, in the shape of a mandala, Samye was built in the 8th century, after Guru Rinpoche was invited to pacify the local demons. The scene of important philosophical debates in the history of Buddhism, Samye is an important pilgrimage site. We will now continue our journey to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.
Jokhang
Norbulingka
Today we will walk through the streets of Bharkhor, a traditional Tibetan neighborhood in Lhasa, where we will visit the Jokhang Monastery, which houses the most sacred statue in all of Tibet, the Jowo Rinpoche. We will also walk through the pleasant and beautiful gardens of the Dalai Lamas' summer palace, the Norbulingkha. We may alternate the order of our visits in the Lhasa Valley a little, according to our pace, with time to enjoy the old part of the city.
Potala
Sera
Drepung
Today we will visit the Potala Palace, where His Holiness the Dalai Lama lived for many of his lives along with many other monks. There are numerous temples and sacred stupas of great masters to visit. We will also visit the important monastic universities of Sera, where, in addition to their temples, we will be able to watch a debate between the monks, and Drepung. Together they constitute two of the largest centers of Buddhist studies in Tibet.
Flight
Free afternoon
In the morning, we will return to Lhasa airport for another incredible flight that will take us over the highest mountain range in the world. If the weather is good, it is possible to see five of the only fourteen mountains in the world that are over eight thousand meters high. Back in Nepal, we will head to our hotel in our already familiar neighborhood.
Time to enjoy our final moments of the trip. Free moments, always so requested, for each Traveller to explore and enjoy as they prefer: in bookstores, cafes, Buddhist art stores, handicrafts, clothing and mountain equipment, stupas, temples or monasteries in the already well-known regions of the city such as Patan, Thamel or Boudhnath, as each Traveller prefers.
Free day
Likewise, a free day is always in high demand. If you're up for it, we can go together to Pashupatinath, the Shiva temple, near our neighborhood. If anyone can stay an extra day, two days, however long it takes, we're sure you'll make the most of those days, whether in Kathmandu itself, nearby regions on the edge of the valley, or by popping into Lumbini or Pokhara. Let us know so we can think about it together and we'll support you, of course.
The international flight can be that night or the next morning or afternoon. This way, you will have a hotel until you arrive at the airport so that you can use the room to pack your bags calmly and rest a little before your international flights. Together, we will choose the best flight combination for your trip, taking all these precautions into account.
We hope you enjoyed your time in Nepal and Tibet. We will be in touch until you get back home and hope you return soon for more travels! Have a great flight!
Flights
If your flight is today, have a great flight!
Photos: Chörten Travels