I highly recommend the overland trip on the Friendship Highway between Lhasa and Kathmandu! It was amazing! We saw such amazing scenery, and met some really wonderful people.

It was easy to set up. We were staying in Lhasa for 5 days before we started, so my friend and I posted notices in all of the hostels and hotels around town saying that we were looking for two people to share a 4x4 with to Everest Base Camp and on to Kathmandu. Within a day we had a lot of responses, and after meeting with a few people we found two others who seemed to have the same interests and who liked our plan for the trip. Then the four of us went and shopped around the local travel shops to see who would give us a good deal on a 4x4 trip. We got our Nepali visas in Lhasa before we left, and hit the road!

The first day we drove from Lhasa to Yamdrok Lake and on to Gyantse for the night. (The fortress is Gyanste is almost as impressive as Potala Palace when you first see it, especially when you consider how isolated the town is). We wandered around town and met some really lovely local kids and played with them in the street until it was dark. Day two we went to Shigatse to see the Monastery and wander around town, before heading to Pelber (Shegar) for the night. In the morning we got up early and went to the Everest (or Qomolangma) National Park entrance to pay our fee before heading to EBC! It was incredible!!! We spent the night in one of the tents at base camp and it was amazing (I wrote a seperate review of our time at EBC). In the morning we were up before the sun to make it from EBC to kathmandu before dark. We got a flat tire though shortly into the trip, but while we were fixing it we got to see the sun rise over the himalayas, so it wasn`t all bad! (just really really cold!). The road to the Nepali border was pretty much just a dried up river bed, so it was rough going and literaly in the middle of nowhere, but a really fun ride! We got to the border and had to say goodbye to our driver, who was absolutly fantastic (his name was Tenzing, and I never felt unsafe on the winding moutain roads for a minute with him, and he played a great mix of traditional Tibetan music and Madonna classics the whole trip! haha).

Once we cleared customs (to leave China, not to enter Nepal!) we grabbed a taxi on the other side and headed to Kathmandu. The weather was already balmy and tropical compared to the freezing temperatures in Tibet that we were used to so it was a nice change! The road from the border to Kathmandu was only about 100-120km, but it took over 4 hours to get to the city because it`s all winding mountain roads. Lhasa and Kathmandu are so completely opposite that it was a bit of a culture shock at first when we arrived, but it was very easy to get used to the lifestyle in Kathmandu, especially in Thamel.

Our trip on the Friendship Highway was fantastic, and a great way to see Tibet. It`s another thing that I hope to do at least once more in my life!!! It was very easy to organize and a lot cheaper than even Lonely Planet suggested, so definitely go if you get the chance! Happy travels! :) COntact me if you want to know any details. I tried not to get too in-depth, but we covered a lot of ground in a short time!

The road from Lhasa to Mount Everest. We traveled along here in May 2005. It's a highly maintained road from China into Nepal. At one point there was a police blockade on it that delayed us by eight hours. Great mystic barren scenery. It's ascends super high to an altitude of about 5000m. Great experience for anyone wanting to go to Mount Everest. Not many toilet stops along the way, lots of mounds of earth to hide behind though! Good cheap Tibetan/ Chinese food along the way.