After our visit to Galapagos in 1999, which I blogged about earlier this year, we had a problem. Friends now regarded us as intrepid travellers and kept asking “Where on earth will you go next?” We felt we had to live up to our reputation, so the following year we chose Tibet. No-one we knew had been there….hmmm, I wonder why not? We were to find out. I know some people question whether it is ethical to visit Tibet at all (and it does make me uneasy) but, having decided to go, our big mistake was the timing.

In 2000, for work reasons, we had to take our holidays in September which is the beginning of the rainy season. The first company we booked with cancelled because there weren’t enough people to make a viable group. Should’ve taken the hint then. We found another company who would take us, but we discovered when we arrived for the start of the tour in Kathmandu* that we were their only clients. We were added to another company’s group, and when we arrived in Tibet we were delegated yet again to a Chinese company. This made it very difficult to know who to complain to if things went wrong – and go wrong they did.

What follows in the next few posts is a lightly edited version of an account I wrote at the time. This was long before I was a blogger, but a lot of friends and colleagues read it, and years later when I was leaving work one of them contacted John without me knowing to get some photographs and she made me a book as a retirement gift. Thanks Cheryl!

So – come back on Monday for the start of our adventures in Tibet.

* See K is for Kathmandu from 2014’s A to Z Challenge.