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Welcome to the first newsletter from Tibet Tours. We aim to inform you about the situation in Tibet, related humanitarian projects and our tours to the region. We will email you a newsletter each quarter with articles and information on our upcoming tours and occasional update emails should something of particular interest arise between newsletter issues. |  |
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Travel broadens the mind, pilgrimage opens the heart and most people who have had the good fortune to visit Tibet consider it a life changing event. This was certainly the case for me, my life can be split into two distinct chapters; before Tibet and after Tibet. There are so many factors that make Tibet such a special place; the simplicity and radiance of the people, the incredible architecture and lovingly created buildings, the energy field emanating from a land filled with devout religious practitioners, the beauty and majesty of the mountains and the altitude – you are literally living in the clouds on the roof of the world. I first travelled to Tibet on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash in 2001. It had such a deep effect upon me that following a return visit in 2005 I set up Tibet Tours with the intention of assisting fellow pilgrims to visit this great land in safety and comfort yet seeing and experiencing it through the eyes of a local as if coming home to your Tibetan family. In this vein the guides we work with are selected for the love and knowledge of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism but most of all for their warm and welcoming nature. I am really excited to welcome Rapgay Sangkar to our team of guides, Rapgay was a monk in Amdo for several years at the esteemed Labrang Monastery before traversing the Himalayas to Dharamsala to accomplish a life-long dream of meeting the Dalai Lama. In 2011 Rapgay will lead a tour through his native Amdo, providing an insider’s experience to the country and the monasteries. Rapgay now lives in Fremantle, Western Australia and will be visiting Amdo in February 2010, his first visit since leaving Tibet nearly 10 years ago, and will be sharing his journey in our next news letter. I encourage all of you to visit Tibet at least once in this lifetime and hope you choose to travel with us. 
All borders are now open again in Tibet and there’s no problem at all for travel within the Tibet Autonomous Region. It is now a requirement that you are part of an organized tour and have a guide with you whenever you visit monasteries and Lhasa. So travelers must be part of a group visa even if it’s a one person group. Central Tibet Tour 
A comprehensive tour of the monasteries and sacred sites of Central Tibet. We will enjoy the valleys surrounding Lhasa which are home to the world’s greatest monastic Buddhist tradition and practitioners. Places to be visited include: Kathmandu, Samye Monastery, Mindroling Monastery, Ganden, Lhasa and sacred places including: Jokhang, Drepung and Sera Monasteries, Potala Palace, Norbulingka, Gyantse, Shigatse, Tashilunpo Monastery, Sakya, Za Rongbuk Monastery, North face of Chomolungma (Everest), Milarepa’s Cave and local villages. Mount Kailash Pilgrimage 2011 Come and commune with the Snow Jewel, Gang Rinpoche, an incredibly sacred place of potent spiritual power. This is the pilgrimage of a lifetime, the Mount Kailash kora is a deeply healing, transformational undertaking for the pilgrim. The tour includes devotional practice and time at sacred sites and the main shrines and temples in Lhasa too. Return to Labrang Labrang is one of the most esteemed and beautiful monasteries in all of Tibet. Led by fomer Labrang Monastery monk, Rapgay, who left Amdo for Dharamsala to fulfill his spiritual dream of meeting His Holiness the Dalai Lama and now lives in Australia, the tour will start in Chengdu and major places we will visit will include Labrang, Mergay Monastery, Kumbum Monastery and Lake Kokonor one of Tibet’s most famous and sacred lakes. We will be visiting the monasteries not as tourists but interacting with the monks and attending teachings. 
Road to Lhasa Travelling overland from Amdo to Lhasa on this incredible pilgrimage we will enjoy the unsurpassed beauty of this magnificent mountainous region, visiting many wonderful monasteries en route, including the Dzogchen Monastery, Reting Monastery and Lhamo Lhatso Lake, the lake of great visions where high lamas would go in ancient times, to search for information on reincarnate lamas. We will travel through Amdo and Kham arriving into Tibet’s holy city, Lhasa, in a manner only one step removed from the travelers of old. The tour also includes time at the main sites of Lhasa under expert guidance. Please see our scheduled tours for more details and itineraries. 
This newsletter we feature Phagmo Tsering, one of Tibet’s foremost tourguides, a local Tibetan living in Lhasa who has led pilgrims on tours of his native land for over 17 years. Phagmo Tsering was born in 1966, in Amdo, the province of Tibet to the North East. Phagmo learnt Chinese at school and Tibetan from his family then in 1984 at 18 years of age he crossed the Himalayas to Dharamsala in India where he studied English. As a diligent student, Phagmo was invited after a few years to the great scholars’ city of Varanasi where he studied Buddhism and Sanskrit a short distance from where Lord Buddha first turned the wheel of dharma. After four and a half years study in Varanassi, Phagmo returned to Dharamsala where he took a post at the Education Department of the Tibetan Community. In 1992, it appeared as if his mother back in Tibet would soon pass from this world and Phagmo once again traversed the Himalayas to be by his ailing mother’s side. His mother recovered from her illness and Phagmo stayed in Tibet beginning a highly successful career utilizing his newly learned skills in English and Buddhist studies as a tour guide. Phagmo quickly became one of Tibet’s most sought after guides requested by clients including National Geographic. In 2007, after 14 years of working for the best agencies in Lhasa Phagmo started his own tour company. I first met Phagmo in 2005 and I was deeply impressed by his gentle nature coupled by a sincere emotional and intellectual understanding of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism. I am honoured for Tibet Tours to have Tsering-la as our Central Tibet specialist.
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Phone: 1800 TTOURS or 1800 88 68 77 Email: jeremy@tibettours.com.au |
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