Day 75 - Problems with Tibet. (China)

We've just received news from our Chinese tourguide that Tibet is now closed to foreign travellers. As our route goes straight through Tibet, this is a bit of an inconvenience to us. We are of course hoping that the situation will be rectified in the six or so weeks between now and when we get there, which seems somewhat likely considering it was also closed at this exact time last year and re-opened a month later.

In the mean time we obviously have to consider contingency plans. Other possible border crossings are Pakistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. We've basically ruled out Pakistan already, as we only have a single entry visa so we wouldn't be able to backtrack to India, Nepal and Bangladesh anyway. If we were to chose Tajikistan or Kazakhstan, we would be missing India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Ironically these are the four countries (as well as China) that we have already paid hundreds of dollars for visas for. The chunk of countries we're looking at skipping makes up about two months of our trip.