Most travelers to Tibet are really great people. However, there are some travelers that probably should have stayed home. If you have been following my site for a while, you will know that I have lived and worked in various regions of the Tibetan Plateau for going on 13 years. I started out working for an NGO that focused on education among Tibetan adults most of whom were nomadic. Then, for several years I owned and managed a successful travel agency focused on budget and midrange tours of Tibet.
Since I work in tourism, nearly all of my good Tibetan friends also work in tourism. I have friends in all areas of Tibet who work as tour guides, trekking guides, drivers, hotel managers, hotel staff, restaurant owners, travel agency managers, sales representatives and just about every other job you could think of that relates to tourism in Tibet. In this post, I will write about some of the horror stories that my Tibetan friends who work in tourism have experienced with foreigners.
Though the majority of foreigners traveling to Tibet are really great people, there are a few out there who are plain rude, disrespectful and mean. Here are a few stories that either I have experienced or my friends haveβ¦..
In , while I was the owner and manager of a travel agency based on the northeast Tibetan Plateau, I had a group of 6 cyclists who I arranged a tour for. This group was very cordial in their emails and asked for a cycling tour from the Nepal border to Lhasa. At the end of their tour, they were to board the train to Xining and continue traveling through Mainland China.
Their tour went very well. The guide reported that the group was quite nice and friendly. At the end of their tour, the Tibetan guide dropped the group off at the train station and said goodbye. We thought that was the last we would see of this pleasant groupβ¦. Three days later the police in Tsetang small city south of Lhasa called our office in the evening to inform us that our group of 6 was caught cycling illegally in Lhoka prefecture.
