Yunnan · 8 days / 7 nights
8-Day Yunnan: Kunming, Dali, Lijiang & Shangri-La
Stone Forest, Erhai lake, the glacier at Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and the Tibetan plateau of Shangri-La — joined by high-speed train, driven by people who live here.
Our most-booked Yunnan loop, and the one we would send a first-time visitor on. Four cities, eight days, one long mountain drive and a great deal of eating.
Day by dayExactly what happens, in order — nothing added for the brochure.
Arrive in Kunming
Our driver meets you at Changshui airport and takes you to the hotel. Kunming sits at 1,900 m and the air is mild all year, which is why the Chinese call it the Spring City. The rest of the day is yours — the flower and bird market on Jingxing Street is the easiest first taste of it.
Stone Forest, then the train to Dali
A two-hour drive brings you to the Stone Forest, a UNESCO karst geopark where limestone pillars rise like a petrified forest. Two to three hours on foot, electric cart included. Lunch at a Yunnan restaurant on the way back, then the high-speed train to Dali; by evening you are watching the lights come on over Erhai Lake from Zhemo Mountain.
Three Pagodas, Erhai lake, Dali old town
The Three Pagodas date from the Tang dynasty and are the symbol of Dali — tickets and the battery car are included. Then a stretch of the Erhai Ecological Corridor, the lakeside path where Bai villages sit between the water and the Cangshan range. You finish inside the Ming walls of Dali’s old town.
Xizhou, Zhoucheng tie-dye, on to Lijiang
Xizhou for the morning market and the Bai courtyards, then Zhoucheng, where the tie-dye workshops still work in indigo. After lunch a two-and-a-half-hour drive north to Lijiang, and an evening in the old town — canals, willows, and Naxi courtyards that have been lived in for eight hundred years.
Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and Blue Moon Valley
Cable car up to the Glacier Park at 4,500 m, then down to Blue Moon Valley, where the water is turquoise from glacial minerals. The afternoon is Impression Lijiang, an open-air show staged against the mountain, then Baisha — the original Naxi capital — and its Ming-dynasty murals.
Tiger Leaping Gorge, on to Shangri-La
Black Dragon Pool at sunrise if the sky is clear, then the drive north to Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the deepest gorges on earth, with the Jinsha River running through the bottom of it. The escalator down and back is included. On to Shangri-La and Dukezong old town, where the prayer wheel in Guishan Park is the largest in the world.
Pudacuo, Songzanlin, train back to Kunming
Pudacuo National Park, a high-altitude wetland of lakes and yak pasture at around 3,500 m, then Songzanlin Monastery — the largest Tibetan monastery in Yunnan, laid out as a smaller copy of the Potala. In the late afternoon, the train back to Kunming, four and a half hours, second class, with the driver waiting at the station.
Fly home
Our driver takes you out to Changshui airport in time for your flight. If it leaves late in the day, tell us and we will build a half-day in Kunming around it.
What is in the priceAnd what is not. We would rather you knew now.
✓Included
- Private vehicle and driver throughout, and all high-speed train tickets (second class)
- English-speaking guide for all eight days
- Five-star hotels as listed, breakfast included
- Entrance tickets and cable cars for every sight in the itinerary
- Driver and guide accommodation and meal allowance; fuel, tolls, parking
- Service charge and government taxes
- Luggage transfers between airports, stations and hotels
- Yunnan travel insurance
−Not included
- International flights to and from China
- Chinese visa fees
- Tips to guides and drivers (suggested RMB 150 per day per group for the guide, 100 for the driver)
- Personal travel accident insurance
- Optional programs and personal expenses
- Excess baggage charged by airlines
Prices depend on dates, party size and the hotels you choose, so we quote per trip rather than publish a number that would be wrong. Send us your dates and we will come back with one figure — in writing, with the hotels named.
PracticalThe things people ask before booking.
Tell us the dates. We will send this route back priced, with the hotels named.
Everything here is a starting point — we cut days, add nights, swap hotels and change the order of cities all the time. Rebecca answers in English, usually within a few hours.
