Kailash Yatra via Beijing and Lhasa

Two reasons. The first is the visa: this route uses an ordinary Chinese tourist visa obtained at home, rather than the group visa issued in Kathmandu, which ties five strangers to one piece of paper and one border. The second is that you see Beijing and Lhasa properly on the way to the mountain instead of driving past them.

It is the longest, the most comfortable and the dearest. Overland by road from Kathmandu is sixteen days and the kindest on the body. Via Lhasa is fourteen and flies in from Kathmandu. The Express is eleven and climbs alarmingly fast. This one is eighteen days, with three nights in Lhasa before anything hard begins.

The train, if you have the temperament for two nights in a sleeper. It crosses the Tanggula Pass at 5,072 m, the highest railway in the world, in carriages with enriched oxygen, and it delivers you to Lhasa having spent a day and a half gaining height. The flight takes four hours and puts you at 3,656 m from sea level in one go.

A standard Chinese tourist visa from the embassy or a visa centre in your own country, before you travel. Do not mention Tibet on the application, because the mention alone routinely causes a refusal, and your itinerary as far as the visa is concerned is Beijing. Your Tibet Travel Permit is then applied for by us against that visa.

Four, and we arrange all of them: the Tibet Travel Permit from the Tourism Bureau, an Alien's Travel Permit for the Ngari prefecture, a military area permit because western Tibet is a border zone, and a foreign affairs permit. They are issued against a paid itinerary and take longer for Kailash than for a Lhasa trip.

Two months at the least, and three is comfortable. The Tibet Travel Permit takes eight or nine working days once your Chinese visa exists, and the Kailash permits are issued in Ngari at their own pace. We ask for a passport and visa scan at least six weeks before departure and we chase you for it.

Yes, and the routing through China is often simpler for Indian passport holders than the Kathmandu group visa, which has periodically been the subject of its own complications. Speak to us early: the visa process differs, and a trip through Beijing needs more lead time than a trip that starts in Kathmandu.

Not dangerous, but it is the fastest gain on the itinerary, and it is the reason the fourth day is deliberately empty. Going from near sea level to 3,656 m in four hours will give a good proportion of any group a headache and a poor night's sleep. We plan for that rather than scheduling a monastery into it.

Three nights in Lhasa before anything higher, a gradual climb west through Shigatse at 3,840 m and Saga at 4,640 m, saturation taken and written down twice a day, oxygen and a portable pressure chamber travelling with the group, and a spare day after the kora. The guide's decision to send somebody down is final.

No. There is no helicopter evacuation anywhere in western Tibet at any price. Descent means a vehicle on the road you arrived by, and the nearest hospital worth the name is a very long way from Darchen. Your insurance must cover evacuation to 6,000 m and we do check the certificate.

Three days and 53 km on paths rather than climbs. Twelve kilometres and gentle to Dirapuk, then twenty two kilometres over the Dolma La at 5,630 m in nine or ten hours, then twelve kilometres downhill. The middle day is hard for everybody. Coming to it after two weeks of gradual altitude makes a great deal of difference.

On the first and third days, arranged at Darchen for roughly $180 to $260 with a handler. On the pass day the horse takes you only as far as the ground allows and everyone walks the steep section above Shiva Tsal. Book it the evening before, since the animals are allocated in turn among local families.

You return to Darchen with a crew member and rejoin the group when it comes round, usually one extra night. The decision is taken at Dirapuk in the morning rather than halfway up the pass. Nobody is carried over the Dolma La, and on a trip this long there is room to sit a day out without losing the journey.

May to September. The Dolma La holds snow either side of that, the kora guesthouses close for the winter, and Tibet routinely shuts to foreign visitors for the whole of March. June and September are the pick: June for warmth and the Saga Dawa festival, September for clear air and fewer people.

The full moon of the fourth Tibetan month, when the great flagpole at Tarboche is taken down, re-dressed and raised again, and thousands walk the kora together. It is the most extraordinary time to be there and the most crowded, and beds on the circuit are scarce. Decide which of those two matters more to you.

Four star hotels in Beijing and Lhasa, three star in Shigatse, a plain hotel in Saga and Darchen, a lakeside guesthouse at Mansarovar, and two nights in kora guesthouses at Dirapuk and Zuthulpuk. Those last two are shared rooms with a mattress and a quilt, no heating and an outside toilet.

Chinese food in Beijing, and very good. Tibetan, Chinese and Nepali food in Lhasa. Vegetarian from Lhasa onward, by the convention that holds around the mountain, and our own cook carries supplies for the plateau. Appetite disappears at height, so we serve soup first and often.

In Beijing and Lhasa on a Chinese sim, yes, and not on the kora. The usual western apps and services are blocked throughout China unless you have arranged something in advance, and we would gently suggest treating the fortnight as time away from them.

Four long days west and three coming back, on good Chinese tarmac that covers enormous distances. The days are dull rather than punishing, which is a different complaint from the Nepali roads. Bring something to read and something for motion sickness if you are prone to it.

For two climates. Beijing in summer is hot and humid. The plateau is dry, cold at night and extremely windy. A windproof shell matters more than another fleece, a four season sleeping bag is needed for the kora guesthouses only, and you will use more sun cream and lip balm than you can imagine.

A full refund of everything paid to us. Refusals happen, they are rarely explained, and journalists, diplomats and anyone whose passport carries certain stamps are refused more often than others. We do not keep a deposit against a decision taken in an office in Lhasa.

Easily, and this is the trip for it. Xian and the terracotta army on the way through, a few extra days in Beijing, Everest Base Camp on the Tibetan side as a detour from Shigatse, or Kathmandu and Chitwan afterwards if you fly out through Nepal. Tell us at booking rather than afterwards.