Independent travelers are not allowed to travel to Tibet and need to apply for your travel permit through a registered travel agency in Tibet. To obtain Tibet Travel Permits, it is compulsory to make your Tibet tour arrangements through a local travel agency, and then provide clear scan copies of your passports and China visa to apply for the Tibet permit (TTP). Please note that it’s impossible for foreigners to board either flights or trains to Tibet without the Travel Permit. The permits themselves specify every destination and towns that you would visit during the tour and cannot be changed once you have arrived in Tibet; therefore, make sure that you have listed all your interesting places on the tour with your tour operator before they apply for the permit.

It usually takes 7 to 10 working days for the Tibet Travel Permit to be issued, then if your tour included restricted areas like Mt.Kailash or further eastern Tibet, then you will another permit from the Tibet Military department which would take another 5 to 7 days. After the Tibet Permit is issued, the travel agency will mail it to your last hotel in Mainland China by making a confirmation call to your hotel in advance if you take a plane to Lhasa(Tibet), FYI, if you only have a stopover at one of the Airports, such as Chengdu, Beijing, Shanghai and so on, make sure that the stopover would be more than 3 hours so that travel agency is able to hire an agent to deliver the Tibet Permit to the Airport for you, but this is a quite complicated situation so better avoid that situation.