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TIPS about HIRING GUIDE AND JEEP in TIBET
Entry 16 of 57 | show all | print this entry |
These are just a few notes & tips about HIRING a GUIDE and JEEP in TIBET.
We had a very bad experience with guides and tibetan travel agencies and we would like to share what we learnt with future travellers. Here is an account of what happened and some tips at the end. More info will be added as other entries.
We wanted to have a "camping trip" of ~20 days including the northern route to Ali, Guge Kingdom, Kailash kora, Everest base camp and then to the Nepalese border.
We were 2 couples, with 2 drivers and a guide who was supposed to cook for us and mount our tents. The presence of the guide/cook forced us to take 2 jeeps (5 people/jeep, unless you put more people in the trunk). This decision came in the hope of camping in nice spots and eating nice food, instead of sleeping in the (usually) crappy guest houses.
Unfortunately many things went wrong, due to the VERY POOR organization of the Lhasa agency, and to the even worse guide.
The agency provided us with very crappy equipment (including two small (cooking) gas tanks, of which one was empty) and the guide basically never did his job: never mounted the tents and provided us with only hot water for breakfast and noodle soup for dinner.
The guide had obviously also other problems: exploiting the fact that he was the only one who could speak tibetan, chinese and english, he started lying to both us and the drivers in order to have them cook and make them angry with us.
Fortunately Ke could speak in Chinese to the drivers and uncovered the guide's lies.
After quarrelling several times with the guide, the other couple, absolutely frustrated, gave up the trip half way and went with one jeep straight to the Nepalese border. We continued with the guide (who promised to behave) till Mt. Kailash. At this point the guide refused again to do his job and we ended up dropping him there and continuing the trip without him...
The rest of the trip went (relatively) well, although we could not camp and had to stay in guest houses. Although we managed to complete our trip, we lost quite a bit of money not only on the guide (useless) and equipment (which we could not use without a cook and without gas... yes we run out of gas on the Kailash Kora...), but also because without the guide/cook, we could have shared 1 jeep among 4 people (saving half of the money).
Anyway we called Mr. Pasang, the manager of the agency (OM TRAVEL AGENCY, at the 2nd floor of PENTOC GUESTHOUSE,LHASA) to ask for a refund of at least the guide and equipment money (about 300USD), and after arguing on that he told Ke on the phone:"I didn't want to let you (Chinese) join the trip, you cause a lot of troubles". She replied:"What do you mean, Mr. Pasang? I cause troubles because I can speak chinese so it is harder to cheat me?". No reply from Mr. Pasang.
He ultimately agreed to refund us and asked for an extra day to calculate the amount. We tried to call him back several times in the next four days, but he was always "unreachable".
We then left the country for Nepal and we wrote him emails, without receiving any reply. We are still waiting for our refund...
So, in conclusion, here are some tips we learned from this story:
1) Avoid to pay in full in advance, especially if you are not coming back to Lhasa. Many agencies will ask you to pay everything in advance (like ours), but some others ask you to pay only ~70% in advance. That helps a lot if you need a refund (several people we met would have asked for it...). Some agencies also have offices in Zhangmu, the border town with Nepal (ours doesn't), which also helps to get your money back, if needed.
In any case, AVOID THE OM TRAVEL AGENCY (2nd floor of PENTOC GUESTHOUSE,LHASA) AT ALL COST! As you have read, we have many reasons to regret picking it!
2) Although there are exceptions, from our experience and the one of many travellers we met, tibetan guides are generally useless. They will basically only translate the menu at the restaurants and they take a precious spot in the jeep (plus 200Y/day). Although by law you shoud have one, try to avoid hiring a guide (several agencies will agree if you insist): you may get fined ~2000Y (it usually does not happen), but it is still cheaper than hiring the guide. Without guide, of course, a bit of knowledge of chinese or tibetan (or a good phrasebook) can greatly help.
3)Avoid a "camping trip", at least from september on. The quality of guide, eqipment and service is generally extremely poor (we were not the only one to complain). Besides, it is freezing cold! However, it is an entirely different story if you organize the trip from Nepal. You may end up paying twice as much, but the service is by far superior (and probably worth the price): we met groups travelling with Nepalese agencies and we experienced the difference in service ourselves in Nepal.
4) Typically budget travellers organize a jeep trip from Lhasa. They look for other travellers to share the jeep cost (~100USD/day including driver) by posting notes at the different hotels. However finding travellers with the same travel plans may be frustrating and time-consuming (typically it takes 7-10 days). This frustration, together with the fact that in Lhasa it is quite hard to breathe (there is not much air because of the altitude and what is left of it is heavely polluted), make you want to leave as soon as possible... and may make you take hasty decisions (as in our case), of which you may regret later... So, although a Lhasa-based trip is usually (much) cheaper than if organized in your home country (3-5X cheaper) or in Nepal (~2X cheaper), it can be quite painful to organize: be prepared!
Latest Comments (1)
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Good advice! (reply)
Feb 10, 2007 17:44 EST by ali_m
Hi, I'm a student planning on travelling from Lhasa to Kathmandu down the Friendship Highway with a friend this summer. It's pretty hard getting good advice from people who've actually done things like this ,and it's useful to know a bit more about what it's like hiring transport from Lhasa.
I was also wondering how hard it was to get a Chinese visa - I've heard it can be very difficult i... show all
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