12 Day Yunnan and Chengdu Tour to Lijiang Shangri La and Pandas

Arrive in Kunming, Yunnan's relaxed provincial capital, and transfer to your hotel. Once you have settled in, an evening food walk through Kunming's old streets introduces you to the city at street level, passing rice noodle counters, grilled snack stalls, and the everyday rhythm of the neighborhood. This walk depends on your arrival time.

Stone Forest is one of Yunnan's most distinctive karst landscapes. Walk among dramatic limestone formations shaped by time, weather, and local legend, while your guide shares the geological and cultural stories behind the landscape. The pillars rise as high as 50 meters and began as marine limestone deposited when the region lay beneath an ancient sea, later uplifted and dissolved by rainwater into the shapes visible today. Shilin was designated a UNESCO Global Geopark in 2004. The Sani, a branch of the Yi ethnic group, have lived here for more than 2,000 years, and their epic poem Ashima is bound to these rocks, which is where many of the formations take their names.

Green Lake sits in the center of Kunming, opposite Yunnan University, and is where the city comes to relax. Two causeways divide the water into linked sections crossed by stone bridges and lined with willows, and on most mornings you will find residents practicing tai chi, playing instruments, dancing, or drinking tea. The lake was once an inlet of Dianchi Lake and became separate as Dianchi's water level dropped. From roughly November to March, thousands of black-headed gulls arrive from Siberia to winter here, a pattern that began in 1985 and has become one of Kunming's best-known seasonal sights.

Xizhou is a Bai town on the west shore of Erhai Lake, north of Dali Old Town. Bai merchant families built courtyard mansions here in the 19th and early 20th centuries, many still standing and open to visitors. The town has a working produce market and is known for xizhou baba, a baked wheat flatbread sold hot from street ovens. You will also visit a rose farm and have the option to make your own rose cakes. The rose farm visit and rose cake making are included in the tour price.

Erhai is a long freshwater lake running north to south below the Cangshan range, and it shapes daily life along its shore. Flat paths follow the water on the western side, with the Cangshan range rising behind them.

Its grid of lanes, restored gates, and Bai-style buildings hold tea shops, tie-dye stalls, and food vendors, and the streets stay busy into the evening.

Begin the day with a Bai Three-Course Tea ceremony. The three servings move from bitter to sweet to a spiced final cup, a sequence the Bai use to represent the arc of a life. Tea is central to how Bai households receive guests, and the ceremony is still performed for visitors in Dali today. The tea ceremony is arranged for your group and included in the tour price.

Shaxi is a stone-built market town in Jianchuan County, north of Dali. It grew as a caravan stop on the Tea Horse Road, the mule route that carried Yunnan tea north toward Tibet, and the old town has kept its central square, cobbled lanes, courtyard houses, and river bridges. It stays quiet compared with Dali and Lijiang.

The morning is yours in Shaxi, with time to walk the lanes, browse the shops around the old market square, and see the town before the day visitors arrive.

After a relaxed morning in Shaxi, you travel on to Lijiang. In the evening you explore Lijiang Old Town, with a Naxi-style barbecue and hotpot dinner.

Baisha was the original Naxi settlement in the Lijiang valley and the seat of the Mu chieftains before they moved south to Dayan in the early Ming. Its best-known feature is the Baisha murals, painted between the early Ming and early Qing periods and held in the Dabaoji Palace and Liuli Temple. They combine Buddhist, Tibetan Buddhist, Taoist, and Naxi Dongba imagery in single compositions, the work of painters from several different traditions. The village sits on the plain below Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. This day visits either Baisha or Yuhu, not both. Your guide confirms which on the day, based on conditions and group interest.

Yuhu sits at the foot of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, the last village on the Lijiang plain before the mountain. Its houses are built from rough glacier stone, which gives the lanes and walls a character you will not find in Lijiang Old Town. The Austrian-American botanist Joseph Rock lived here on and off between 1922 and 1949, collecting plants and working on Naxi language and culture for National Geographic and others. His courtyard house is preserved as a small museum. This day visits either Baisha or Yuhu, not both. Your guide confirms which on the day, based on conditions and group interest.

Jade Dragon Snow Mountain rises north of Lijiang, its highest point, Shanzidou, reaching about 5,596 meters. A cableway carries visitors to a boardwalk and viewing area on the upper slopes, where the air is thin and conditions change quickly. Which cableway runs, and how high it goes, depends on the weather and on scenic area operations that day. Warm layers matter here even in summer.

Blue Moon Valley sits below the glacier on the east side of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, where meltwater collects in a chain of shallow terraced pools. The water carries fine limestone sediment, which is what produces the turquoise colour on clear days. After heavy rain or in low-water periods the colour fades toward grey, so what you see depends on the season.

Shuhe is a smaller Naxi town northwest of Lijiang Old Town and part of the same UNESCO World Heritage inscription. It was a stop on the Tea Horse Road and has kept its stone bridges, water channels, and central square. It stays quieter than Lijiang Old Town. This day visits either Shuhe or Dayan, not both. Your guide confirms which on the day, based on conditions and group interest.

Tiger Leaping Gorge runs between Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and Haba Snow Mountain, with the Jinsha River, the upper Yangtze, forced into a narrow channel far below the road. At the Upper Gorge a large rock splits the current, and the name comes from a story about a tiger escaping hunters by leaping across at that point. Stairways lead down toward the water, and the descent is steep.

Shangri-La is the seat of Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, set on a highland plain at about 3,200 metres. This is the highest point of the tour and the altitude is noticeable. You explore Dukezong, the Tibetan old town that grew as a stop on the Tea Horse Road, and climb Guishan hill above it, where a temple holds a prayer wheel large enough that it takes several people to turn. The town was called Zhongdian until 2001, when it was renamed after the valley in James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon. A fire in January 2014 destroyed roughly half the old town, and much of what stands today was rebuilt and reopened in 2016.

Songzanlin, also called Ganden Sumtseling, is the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Yunnan and belongs to the Gelug school. It was founded in 1679 on a site chosen by the Fifth Dalai Lama and completed in 1681. Its tiered white walls and gilded roofs rising up the hillside earned it the name Little Potala Palace. The original complex was destroyed in 1966 during the Cultural Revolution, and what stands today was rebuilt from 1982. It sits at about 3,380 meters, and the climb up the steps is felt at that altitude.

d forest, lake, and pasture between about 3,500 and 4,150 meters, and forms part of the Three Parallel Rivers UNESCO World Heritage Site. Announced in 2007, it was the first national park in China built to IUCN standards. Visits follow a fixed loop by shuttle bus, with boardwalks at Shudu Lake, the Militang pasture, and Bita Lake. The elevation is higher than Shangri-La town itself.

Nixi is a village outside Shangri-La where potters work a local clay entirely by hand, without a wheel, and fire the pieces in open flame. That firing is what turns the surface black. The pots are made for everyday Tibetan cooking and tea as much as for sale, and workshops let visitors shape a piece themselves. OR Napahai is a seasonal wetland on the plain west of Shangri-La. It fills after the summer rains and shrinks back to open grassland in the dry months, so its size changes through the year. Horses and yaks graze the margins, and in winter it is a wintering ground for black-necked cranes. In the afternoon you transfer to Shangri-La airport for the flight to Chengdu, arriving in the evening.

The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding sits north of the city centre and keeps giant pandas and red pandas in large planted enclosures alongside a breeding and research programme. Pandas are most active in the cooler morning hours, especially around feeding, so an early arrival changes what you actually see.

Bamboo chairs and low tables are set out under the trees by the water, and people sit for hours over covered cups of green tea, playing cards and mahjong. Ear cleaning, a Chengdu speciality done with long metal tools, is offered at the tables.

Kuanzhai Xiangzi, the Wide and Narrow Alleys, is a set of three parallel lanes in central Chengdu lined with grey brick courtyard buildings. The layout dates to the Qing period, when the area housed a Manchu garrison, and the buildings were heavily restored in the 2000s. It is now given over to teahouses, restaurants, bars, and shops, and it is busiest in the evening.

Tianfu International Airport for your departure flight.