Six kinds
Read the first line of an entry before anything else. 18 of these 123 routes are banned or closed, some of them with fines running into six figures, and they are listed here because people still attempt them.
The second thing is whether a foreign passport is enough on its own. It is for 89 of them. 15 need a permit, a border pass or a registered club, which is a thing to arrange before you fly, not on the day. The background is on the hiking page.
By kind
What Sort of Walk
| Kind | Routes | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Day Hikes | 51 | Out and back between breakfast and dinner, on a path that exists. |
| Multi-Day, Light Pack | 20 | Two days or more with a bed and a meal at the end of each: guesthouses, monasteries, herders’ camps. |
| Multi-Day, Carrying Camp | 23 | Tent, stove and food on your back, with no resupply for days. |
| Pilgrimage Circuits | 6 | Walked clockwise around a mountain or a lake, by people doing it as a rite rather than a hike. |
| Desert, Steppe, Coast and Forest | 15 | Ground that is not mountain: dunes, grassland, shoreline, taiga. |
| Routes You Should Not Walk | 8 | Crossings that are banned or closed. They are listed because people still attempt them, and because the bans are real. |
Walking It Legally
Some of these need a Tibet permit, a border pass or a registered club behind you, and a few are closed outright with fines attached. Tell our local team which route and which week, and they will say what has to be arranged and what is currently shut.