Beijing Lhasa Trains - Route, Schedule, Fares, Permit, Ticket Booking 2025

1. Beijing is the most popular International arrival city in China. Once arriving at Beijing, without any middle transfer, you can directly take a train to Lhasa from Beijing West Railway Station.

2. Beijing operates a daily train Z21 to Lhasa. As the starting city, it is easier to obtain a train ticket.

3. It is perfect to travel Beijing with Tibet because both two destinations are full of things to do.

The railway distance between Beijing and Lhasa is as far as 3757km, stretching from the lower northern China to the high plateau of Tibet and crossing 8 provinces and more than 30 cities, which make the Beijing Lhasa Train as a traversing journey to experience China’ diverse landscape and culture.

▷ How to Travel from Beijing to Tibet

It totally depends on you to take a train to Lhasa from Beijing or take the returning ride. According to our experience, more than half of our customers chose the Beijing to Lhasa Train as it is a gradual rise of altitude, which is helpful for high altitude acclimation, and they did prefer a fast air transfer after the long trip in Tibet, especially when they needed to take flights to Kathmandu, Nepal. While there is also a good reason to choose the returning train ride. It is much easier to book the ticket from Lhasa to Beijing and other inland cities. So if you fail to book train ticket from Beijing to Lhasa, no worry, try the returning ride.

Since it is a journey more than 40 hours from Beijing to Lhasa by train, you may be interested in some major cities along the way where the train would stop for long time, and you can use the stopping time to stretch your legs, breath some fresh airs and get some supplies of food and drinks.

Lanzhou

Both the train from Beijing to Lhasa or Lhasa from Beijing will take a stop around 15 minutes in the daytime at Lanzhou Railway Station. You can get off the car and get some rest and take a glimpse of this city of Yellow River. The city is known for its Lanzhou Noodles.

Xining

Xining is famous for having the largest salt lake in China – Qinghai Lake. No matter you take the train from Beijing to Lhasa, or from Lhasa to Beijing, you can see part of this beautiful plateau lake. The train usually stops at Xining for 20 minutes.

Golmud

The train usually stops for 25 minutes in Golmud Railway Station. If you take train from Beijing to Lhasa, it will be around 10pm when the train gets to Golmud. If you set out from Lhasa, you will get to Golmud in the early morning around 7am when is good time to see the Tibetan antelopes.

A Tibet Travel Permit (Tibet Entry Permit) is the MUST-DOCUMENT to take a train to Lhasa from Beijing. Travelers need the Tibet Travel Permit to book the train ticket and board the train in Beijing West Railway Station. The photocopy of Tibet Travel Permit is also available if you don’t have the original permit in your hands. (The original permit is required if you take the trains from Chongqing, Xian and Lanzhou to Lhasa). Please remember to dumplicate at least 3 copies of Tibet Travel Permit because the permits are required for many occasions. When you checking in at railway station, the office man may take one of your Tibet Travel Permit copy away. The permit can only be issued in Tibet by the Tibet Tourism Bureau, and also can be only applied by travel agency behalf of travelers. It needs about 15~20 working days to obtain the permit.

How to Apply for Tibet Travel Permit

1. Contact a us to work out and confirm an itinerary in Tibet;

2. Send us the scanned copies of your passport, and provide an available address in China(hotel or local agency) to receive your permit;

3. We apply for the Tibet Travel Permit from Tibet Tourism Bureau in Lhasa;

4. Once the permit is issued, we will send the original permit to you by post.

☞ Learn more detail about Tibet Travel Permit Application

TThere are two ways to book the Train Tickets – book on your own or contact a travel agency to book for you. If you are already in Beijing or other cities in China, you can go to any of railway station to book the train tickets. Original passport and photocopy of Tibet Travel Permit (Tibet Entry Permit) is required. You can ask the conductor to provide your preferred sleepers (upper or lower) if they are available. You can also provide us your passport information, and we will book the train tickets for you online.

Some useful tips to increase the chance of successful ticket booking

1. Contact us to apply for the Tibet Travel Permit as soon as possible. Then try to book the ticket about 30 days in adance;

2. If you fail to obtain a ticket for Beijing to Lhasa train, you can change a starting station, such as Lanzhou and Xining. These two cities offer bigger chance to get a ticket.

The Beijing Lhasa Train journey can be divided into two halves: The first half is from Beijing to Xining which is a train journey about 1800km and needs about 19 hours to finish. The second half is from Xining to Lhasa. It goes about 1950km and needs about 21 hours to run through the journey. If you want to shorten the Beijing Lhasa Train travel, you can escape the first half (Beijing-Xining), and just take the second half, the real highlight of the train journey – Qinghai Tibet Railway. You can take a flight from Beijing to Xining firstly, then spend one or two days there to visit the beautiful Qinghai Lake, the homeland of the Buddhist master Tsongkhapa – Taer Monastery, and enjoy exotic snacks, which is actually very helpful for acclimatizing yourself to the high altitude before getting to Lhasa (altitude: 3700m) because the altitudes in Xining are only around 2300 to 3300. Then take a train to Lhasa from Xining. According to our years’ experience, it is much easier to book a train ticket to Lhasa in Xining because there are some available seats and sleepers as some passengers on the train Z21 will leave the train on the midway stations. Besides, you can choose to take another train from other cities, such as Chengdu, Shanghai, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Lanzhou, etc.(all trains to Lhasa will pass by Xining Railway Station)

☞ 11 Days Beijing Xining Tibet Traversing Tour