Qinghai Kora Around Amnye Machen

Overview

Amnye Machen (6,282 m) is the great mountain god of Amdo, and its kora is what Tibetan pilgrimage looks like away from the crowds: roughly 180 km of high grassland, glacier snouts and mani walls at 4,000-4,600 m, walked in eight to ten days alongside nomad families driving yaks between summer pastures. You will be offered butter tea in black yak-hair tents, pass prayer walls of carved stones centuries old, and quite possibly meet no other foreigners at all. Logistics are the real difficulty here rather than technical ground. Access runs from Xining across the Qinghai plateau by hired 4WD — two long days — a local Tibetan guide is essential for navigation and courtesy, and you carry or horse-pack everything; resupply amounts to a handful of monastery villages. The weather can throw snow across the trail even in July. Go July to September when the grasslands are green and the passes clear. Around £2,000 per person covers transport from Xining, guide, horses and permits for the ten-day circuit.

Book This Trip

Plan Your Dates

Prefilled for 1 July 2027 — the next best-season window. Search on partner sites — opens in a new tab.