Yunnan self-guided tour: Kunming – Stone Forest – Yuanyang – Duoyishu – Jianshui – Kunming – Dali – Xizhou – Shaxi – Shangri-La – Lijiang – Shuhe
Good evening, Antoine,
We’re very satisfied with our trip to China, which fully met our expectations: the places we visited, the people we met (Jackie, Daniel, Brian at the Linden Centre, the Tibetan guide, the young woman who runs the Timeless Inn and our guide Léa) and the accommodation you suggested. The two drivers were extremely friendly and helpful, the guides really nice, and everything was perfectly orchestrated. Thank you.
In detail:
The two days in the rice terraces of Yuanyang were an unforgettable experience. Likewise, we felt off the beaten track in Shangri-La. We saw a huge number of hotels under construction in both places. If they fill up with Chinese tourists in a few years, I think French travellers will stop going there. You’ll have to find them more remote spots! For the Stone Forest, you should advise your clients to buy the shuttle ticket on top of the entrance ticket. It saves an uninteresting 3 km walk, and you can then take the shuttle around the park to get away quickly from the areas most crowded with tourists.
We really liked Jianshui, Dali, Xizhou, Shaxi and Shangri-La. Very good timing at Tuanshan: we arrived at 9 am, before everyone else, and could visit quietly, on our own. We left around 11 am, just as the tour coaches were arriving. From Dali, we recommend our walk: take the cable car up at around 10 am, do the hike, come down by chairlift at around 2 pm, then visit the town. Lijiang was very disappointing. You have to go far into the little side streets to find some authenticity and get away from the crush of Chinese tourists. There’s no point going to Lijiang once you’ve visited all the towns mentioned above. We didn’t enjoy our stop at Tiger Leaping Gorge. On the way, we stopped at a restaurant that was far too touristy, and we didn’t do a hike, just two hours going up and down to a viewpoint that was nothing special and packed with Chinese tourists. (Sorry to insist, but the Chinese tourists really are dreadful: they push, talk very loudly and only think about taking selfies.)
Something to consider for future French travellers like us, instead of the “visit Lijiang” stage: either do a hike around Lijiang, or remove Lijiang from the programme altogether and instead spend a night at Tiger Leaping Gorge to have time for a hike, stay just one night in Shangri-La, and leave Shangri-La the next afternoon or evening by plane to Kunming or by car to Lijiang.
The nights on the train went relatively well. But we certainly didn’t expect a loudspeaker blaring adverts in the corridor for two hours, or the return train to Kunming arriving an hour and a half early. That’s life! Sleeper train, then a flight from Kunming to Hong Kong… luckily we stopped for a night in Hong Kong to take a shower. Going straight from the sleeper train to the Kunming–Hong Kong flight and then the flight back to France would have been unpleasant.
We loved all the accommodation you suggested, which, as we had hoped, had real soul!
We enjoyed ending our trip with a French-speaking guide, whom we could ask lots of questions about the customs we had observed throughout the trip (we hadn’t always dared to ask in English, for fear of being misunderstood).
Thank you again for helping us with this wonderful journey and for all these memories.
We look forward to travelling with Asian Roads again.
Best regards,
Florence and Sébastien
