alternative to nathula

assuming by the time i take the trip, nathu la is still closed to foreign touists, there is one alternative.

Lasha – Kathmandu – India

There are four border crossings open to tourists. The Sunauli-Bhairawa border crossing is the closest to Varanasi, the Raxaul-Birganj crossing to Patna, Kolkata, and Siliguri-Kakarbhitta is to Darjeeling. The Banbassa-Mahendrenagar border crossing in the extreme west of Nepal, is the closest to Delhi.

The crossing between Nepal and Tibet via Kodari is open to independent travelers entering Nepal, but only to organised groups entering Tibet. Wikitravel, Nepal

Birganj

• Birganj is the best border crossing from the point of view of accessibility.
• The others to the west ae contrary to the intended path
• The east roads skirt Everest

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Janakpurd

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janakpurdham

Site of nepals last railway. Also one of the fastest growing centers. Should offer a more interesting alternative to Biranji

Crossing

There are only a few crossngs open to visitors. This will mean I will have to re-evaluate a couple of countries…

China, Nepal, Vietnam, India, Butan

Hopefully there is some good data online, foreign affairs?

Nathu La – Gangtok

Gangtok is the capital of east Sikkim

http://www.indialine.com/travel/sikkim/nathula-pass.html

Xigaze – Nathu La

Only a couple of blogs about getting in to India this way

• http://praveenkm2.blogspot.com/2009/05/day-60-may-7-nathu-la-saga.html
• http://404phylenotfound.blogspot.com/2009/03/trip-to-north-east-part-ii.html

Still have no idea if you can get through. Chinese and Indian tourists regularly go right up to the border crossing. It seems advanced notification to the local military might go a long way to slipping through during trading hours?

Lhasa

Seems a bit or a tourist mecca and probably tourist trap, both foreign and chinese tourists flock there

The face of Lhasa appears Chinese due to this and policies of migration

at about 110 yuan per night its still cheap, there are plenty of 5 stars too.

The web has lots of advice and opinions, very little helpful or positive

Contrary to alot of posts on Tibet, actual travel blogs report free and open travel all over Tibet

• http://www.travbuddy.com/Tibet-travel-blogs-p608
• http://www.travelpod.com/blogs/0/China/Lhasa.html

Buses

• http://www.57tibet.com/TIBET/Html/2005715201659-1.html

Getting out

Lhasa to Katmandu, seems like the busiest unseald highway in the world, tour busses leave daily, regular busses as well, jeeps, bicycles, probably some horses too.

There is a bus to the southern part of Xigaze, 38 yuan

• http://www.51766.com/zhuti/11001/1100162470.html

Lanzhou – Lhasa, The Tibetan Plain

Probably the biggest railway engineering project this century, so far anway.

青藏铁路

As usual the best summary in wikipedia:

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9D%92%E8%97%8F%E9%93%81%E8%B7%AF

See this forum for the best pictures http://bbs.hasea.com/forum-76-1.html

See this blog for even more: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/indexlist_1263753325_6.html

Tickets are reportedly hard to get and even hard seats can be vastly inflated by scalpers, or tourist operators.

Starts at 900 yuan

As a backup there as still buses

• 2216km 380 Yuan, 3 days

Again the Kunming alternative shows up

• http://wikitravel.org/en/Yunnan_tourist_trail

Lanzhou

This is the main junction with the Tibetan railway.

Depending on the political climate  this is also the biggest fork in the road for the trip.

I want to go south to Tibet and on to India via the Nathu La Pass.

You average lonelyplanet tells me that this is strictly forbidden however there are plenty of travelogues of people making their way through the pass, particularly locals returning to India or even a couple of cyclists.

Read some more hysterical blog entries and people will tell you that the chinese army will arrest you and deport you if you even glance sideways at them. I think the army has better things to do thou, Tibet isnt the most glamourous of assignments.

If Tibet is closed then I can travel on from here to Urumqi then Khazakstan.

another lesslikely route would be the more interesting bus through to Pakistan.