In 2010 I travelled to Chengdu with the intention of visiting Tibet. From there it was easy to find other people aiming for the same, get the needed permissions, and organize the trip with the mandatory official guide and driver. While waiting for the trip to start, I took a 10+ hour ride through bumpy roads on a packed bus, to the deeper parts of the Sichuan province. There I hiked for days at high altitude (above 4000m most of the time) and visited villages and buddhist monasteries, soaked in Tibetan culture. After the return by bus to Chengdu, I took the Qinghai-Tibet train to Lhasa, a train that travels at times over 5000m and whose rails in some sections are anchored directly to the permafrost.
