Adi Kailash and Om Parvat stay inside India and need only an Inner Line Permit. The Kailash Mansarovar Yatra crosses into Tibet, runs 22 days, costs about 2.09 lakh, caps age at 70 and requires a Chinese visa. We run the first and cannot get anybody a place on the second.
Two journeys share most of a name and are not the same thing. Booking one while picturing the other is a serious mistake, so here is the difference in plain terms.
**Adi Kailash and Om Parvat** is what we run. It stays inside India, in the Vyas valley of Pithoragarh district. It needs an Inner Line Permit, which is issued at Dharchula or Pithoragarh. It is a matter of days rather than weeks. There is no foreign visa, no border crossing, and no fixed upper age limit set by the district administration, though every traveller is medically screened at Dharchula and again at Gunji.
**The Kailash Manasarovar Yatra** is the Government of India pilgrimage to Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar in Tibet, run by the Ministry of External Affairs. It crosses into China at Lipulekh. In 2026 it ran ten batches of fifty over June to August, at roughly two lakh nine thousand rupees, over twenty two days. Applications closed in May and places are allocated by a draw of lots.
Its conditions are strict and worth reading before anybody sets their heart on it. The age limit is eighteen to seventy as on the first of January. Body mass index must be twenty five or below. Applicants with high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma, heart disease or epilepsy are not eligible. Anyone found medically unfit at any stage is not permitted to continue. The government's own advisory notes trekking at altitudes up to nineteen and a half thousand feet, and every yatri signs a consent form for cremation of their remains on the Chinese side in the event of death. Evacuation by helicopter for a serious health problem is at the traveller's own cost.
We do not run that yatra and we cannot get anybody a place on it; it is applied for directly through the Ministry. If Mount Kailash in Tibet is what you are looking for, we would rather tell you that plainly than sell you the journey we do run.
At the SDM office in Dharchula, or at Pithoragarh district hospital rooms 28 and 29. It is valid for four days, cut from fifteen in May 2024 to reduce crowding at altitude. The Inner Line you actually cross is at Chiyalekh, above Dharchula, where the ITBP checks everyone.
Layers rather than one heavy jacket, shoes you have already worn in, and sun protection that matters more at altitude than the temperature does. Carry original documents on paper: there is no usable signal for long stretches above Dharchula, and a missing paper ends the trip at Chiyalekh.