On this page you will find Tibet altitude information. The goal is to help you get a sense of the elevations of some of the places you may visit in Tibet. Because the average altitude in Tibet is so high, we strongly advise you to learn about how to avoid altitude sickness on your trip.
If you’re planning a trip to Tibet, you should also know that no independent travel is allowed to Tibet and you must work with a travel agency. You can ask us here to connect you to a reliable Tibetan-owned travel agent. (Note to our Indian friends: Our agents in Tibet cannot help Indian nationals.)
The best way to view the table below is to open it up to your full screen on a desktop computer.
We began to create this list in desperation as we prepared for a trip to Kham and Amdo. It was shockingly hard to find the altitudes of many of the places on the itinerary. There doesn’t seem to be one, user-friendly source for Tibet altitude information. To make matters much worse, the names of Tibetan cities, towns and monasteries have many crazy variations when written in English, or when transcribed from the Chinese version. And no one agrees on the elevations. This list is just an initial, imperfect, start to help you plan a safer trip to Tibet.
To make this list, we have relied on a multitude of sources for the Tibet altitude and place name info. We would really appreciate any input from those that are better informed about the data in the list. And we would especially appreciate knowing about new places and elevations.
To learn more about altitude sickness in Tibet, see these posts: