After sampling every Yunnan restaurant Beijing has to offer, we had to go for the real thing! We went on an 8 day trip through Yunnan and it was fabulous. It was a bit whirlwind, but we wanted to see it all, so 5 stops in 8 days! We took an early flight first flew to Kunming and once there, we went straight to the Stone Forest, a really neat area of karst formations where we spent the afternoon. The next morning we went to see Yuan Tong temple and the flower market before taking our noon flight to Dali. We hit the ground running in Dali too: we were picked up by a driver who took us straight to the Cangshan. We went up on the cable car, hiked around and enjoyed the beautiful views. The next morning we went to see the symbol of Dali, the 3 pagodas, where the kids had a blast playing with the many turtles in the pond, then started our drive towards Lijiang. On the way to Lijiang we stopped to see some views of Erhai Lake and also in Xizhou which is a small ancient town- very characteristic! There, we sampled the delicious baba bread, the typical bread of Yunnan. So good, we’re addicted!
By late afternoon we arrived in Lijiang, a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is so picturesque and beautiful! We never got tired of walking around its alleys with waterways and bridges…like a little Chinese Venice! We took some day trip out to Jade Dragon Snow Mountain;, we didn’t go up to the glacier but hiked at the bottom around a spectacular lake with turquoise waters. The kids enjoyed catching tadpoles while getting muddy shoes! We also visited the ancient villages of Baisha and Shuhe, for more exploring, eating and shopping!
Making our way to our final destination, we stopped one night in Tiger Leaping Gorge. We arrived in the evening, just in time to enjoy a cold beer at the guesthouse, surrounded by majestic mountains. The next morning we went down to the gorge. We got there early enough that we had the deck all to ourselves, so we had some fun with acrobatics…after admiring the breath-taking scenery, of course!
Our last stop was Shangri La, at 3,300m elevation, though we didn’t feel it at all. The say this is what writer James Hilton was referring to when writing his “Shangri La”….so they changed this city’s name to it from Zhongdian just a few years ago! The location is breathtaking, you can really feel the Tibetan influence. We brought gloves and hats , but ended up with a sunburn!
Yunnan is a great travel destination! Beautiful scenery, friendly people and delicious food! Definitely worth it! I took over a 1,000 pictures, here’s a few of them…
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