8 Days Yunnan Minority life Experience to Kunming, Dali, Lijiang, Shangri-La

Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan Province, which is one of China’s noted historical and cultural cities. The city is located in central Yunnan at the elevation of 1894 meters above sea level and is praised as the city of eternal spring.

Buffet breakfast at hotel. Start your tour on 8:00am, drive along the new express way to Stone Forest. Stone Forest is 75 kilometers from Kunming and is accessible by a bus ride of 70 minutes. The Stone forest belongs to the typical Karst geomorphology, it consists of innumerable bizarre-shaped ancient limestone cliffs and peaks created by wind and water erosion some 200 million years ago, and this area is praised as the “First Wonder Under Heaven”.

Drive back to Kunming. Visit the Green Lake Park in the afternoon, Green Lake Park is the biggest park in the city proper of Kunming. and you will see people in Kunming enjoying their leisure life in the afternoon. If weather permit, you could learn to write Chinese Calligraphy using water and over-size brush writing on the ground in the green lake park( 14:00-16:00pm). If it rains, we will adjust to visit Yunnan Army Militery School (Jiangwutang)

Then drive to Kunming Train Station on 16:00pm and take a late afternoon high-speed/Bullet train to Dali. Meet and pick up by the local guide and driver, transfer to your hotel.

Start your tour on 8:30am, take a cable car up to Cangshan Mountain, trekking on Yudai Road for two hours, then have a vegaterain lunch in Jizhaoan Monestery. It is very famous for its gardening and vegeterain food.

Then transfer to Zhoucheng village and learn to make the local famous Tie-dye cloth. Then drive back to visit old town of Dali, weathered gray granite stands at 2,100 meters on a long, narrow rice plain between the Cangshan Mountains and the Erhai Lake, a natural configuration that seems specially designed for a good, bountiful life. Format of the old town is like a chessboard with four gates guarding in the directions of east, south, west and north, a design that was adopted by most towns in ancient China.

Start your tour on 8:30 am, overland drive of 180 kilometers, or 2.5 hours along the new highway to Lijiang, on the way visit the Bai village Xizhou and Xizhou morning Market. Then take a horse-cart in Xizhou old Town(half hour for taking photos). 23 kilometers north of Dali, Xizhou village has a more mixed population and cosmopolitan background. It grew and flourished in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) along with the fortunes of Dali’s renowned tea merchants that traded to Tibet. Family Yan’s courtyard is a good example of traditional Bai houses. And each morning, villagers in Bai dresses gather in a small market to buy and sell their produce and daily wares. Enjoy the Bai People's three tea for songs and dances.

After lunch, continue to heading to Lijiang. Upon arrival, check in the hotel. Then visit old town of Lijiang with Zhongyi Local market and Black Dragon Pond with Dongba Museum. A gathering place of rugged mountain people with the Naxi forming the majority, Lijiang is a small mountain town of stone and tile, laced with swift canals, which was enlisted as an UNESCO World Cultural Heritage in 1999.

Start your tour on 8:30 am. Taday, you will visit the outskirts of Lijiang. Drive to visit Baisha Village with Fresco. Learn to make embroidery in a local institution. Then visit a local Naxi family and learn to cook some dishes and enjoy a home-made lunch in the family.

Then visit the Yuhu Village, a simple village of Naxi minority with the former residence of Dr. Joseph Rock. Dr. Rock, an Austro-American botanist and explorer who lived here off and on from 1922-1949, is best remembered for the introduction of innumerable plant species to the West and his rigorous works on Naxi ethnology. (if clients don’t want to visit the former residence of Dr. Joseph Rock.) Then drive back to visit Si Fang Jie (Square Street) of Old town of Lijiang is a big area with its center, or in the form of an official ink stone, hence its name Dayan (ink stone) Town. It enjoys a long history of over 800 years and unlike most of the old towns in China, there is no city walls due to a superstitious belief of the local ruler whose family name is Mu (tree), when encircled by walls, would be Kun (besieged). Wooden structures, mountains, small rivers and lanes integrate harmoniously in this mountain town.Visit Yushui village of Naxi.

Buffet breakfast at hotel. We drive to Zhongdian, also named Shangri-La with stops and visit the Tiger Leaping Gorge on the way. Go hiking in the Tiger Leaping Gorge for two hours,from Halfway guesthouse to Tina’s guesthouse. Wedged tightly between titanic cliffs, the river is so narrow here, as legend tells us, that a hunted tiger made his escape to the other side in a single bound. Here, the Jade Dragon Snow Mountains and the Haba Snow Mountains lean close to each other and a large volume of torrent moving between them cutting deeper and deeper into the bottom of the gorge. In some places there is a drop of 3,000 meters to the water. Clients will change to a local van and up to half-way guesthouse and start they 2 hours’ hiking from half way to Tina’. Then meet your driver and drive to Shangri-la, have a short stop at Xiaohzongdian and take some photos, enjoy the high-altitude grassland scenery. Arrive at Zhongdian in the late afternoon, check in the hotel

Visit Ganden Songzanlin Monastery in the morning. Songzanlin Monastery, the biggest monastery in Zhongdian, is built on a hill immitating the Potala Palace in Lhasa. More than 500 lamas live and study here. Then drive to Intangible Cultural Heritage Museum and experience to paint Thangka. Visit a Tibetan family where the Tibetan builds their houses by wood with big sitting room and Buddhism hall, try the home-made buttered tea and yak cheese.

After lunch, drive to visit Napa Lake, Napa Wetlands, or Lake Napa Nature Reserve (aka Lake Napa), lying in the valley of a high mountain plateau situated about 3270 m above sea level. Lake Napa is a so-called Ramsar site under the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Most of the area is marshy wetland that becomes dry from late fall through winter, but from spring through summer, the area again becomes an expansive wetland that attracts countless flocks of birds, such as the bar-headed goose – as well as a number of other species of geese – the common mallard, the Himalayan griffon, the egret and the white-tailed eagle.

Then, drive back to Du Ke Zong Romantic Village and learn to do Hand-paint Mani Stone, in addition to the "six-character truth" and Tibetan scriptures "卍" symbols, Mani stone carvings are also carving various Buddha statues as well as dragons, frogs, fish, birds, lions, elephants, pagodas ,Flowers and other patterns. In addition to pay attention to decoration, Mani stone carvings also incorporated the rich worldly life into the sculpture. Today, Mani stone is no longer as a symbol for religious meaning, it becomes a life-oriented artistic. People put Mani stone in the room for decoration.

Today you will be transferred to the airport and back to your sweet home, wish you have a pleasant home journey.