My Yunnan, Sichuan & Kham travel
In the province Yunnan live a lot of minority people. Also the scenery there is very alternate and beautiful. In Yunnan I visited major tourist cities as Dali and Lijiang. But I also visited the cities of Wuding and Chuxiong, where almost no (foreign) tourist come. I enjoyed seeing this cities very much. The people where very friendly and relaxed there. After the Chinese part of Yunnan I visited the Tibetan part of Yunnan. This part, also known as East Tibet, is called Kham. This Kham area extends into the neighbouring province Sichuan. In the Kham part of the province Yunnan I visited the city of Shangri La (formerly known as Zhongdian). There is a big Tibetan monastery there, the Ganden Sumtseling Monastery. At the time of my visit they were rebuilding the old town of Shangri La with it’s wooden houses after the devastating fire in January 2014. The old town was already rebuilt to a large extent. I think it will be largely rebuilt mid 2016. After Shangri La I went to Deqin. The main attraction of Deqin is the mountain range of holy Karwa Kharpo (in Chinese known as the Meili Snow Mountain). Especially at sunrise you have beautiful views on this high mountain range.
After Deqin the trip went north again. Into the Kham region in the province Sichuan. Especially the drive from Deqin to Xiangcheng and onwards to Daocheng was so incredible beautiful. We went over small dirt roads, through barren valleys with little villages, saw little villages with green agricultural fields. We went high into the mountains with trees in autumn colours and over high passes with snow. In October 2014 I also traveled in the Kham region of Sichuan. So I now saw some things I also saw a year before. But I also saw new things. Like the beautiful monastery with the temple with the golden roof in the small town of Tagong. Through the pleasant city of Kanding I traveled back to Chengdu. I arrived back at Chengdu with a lot of photos and very good memories on this trip. Of course I had for this trip my own Tibetan driver and guide. So traveling there was easy for me. Because the tourist infrastructure in Kham is very basic and if you depend on public transport there, it’s a lot more difficult and time consuming to travel around Kham. Also not many people speak English there. But it’s a great area to visit!!!
Itinarary
I will give you the itinerary of my trip. Before and after this trip I spent some relaxing days in Chengdu. But in between this was my travel plan:
Day 1 Chengdu – Dechang
Day 2 Dechang – Wuding
Day 3 Wuding
Day 4 Wuding – Kunming – Chuxiong
Day 5 Chuxiong
Day 6 Chuxiong – Dali – Lijiang
Day 7 Lijang – Shangri La
Day 8 Shangri La
Day 9 Shangri La
Day 10 Shangri La – Deqin
Day 11 Deqin – Xiangcheng
Day 12 Xiangcheng – Daocheng
Day 13 Daocheng
Day 14 Daocheng – Litang – Tagong
Day 15 Tagong – Kanding
Day 16 Kanding
Day 17 Kanding – Ya’an
Day 18 Ya’an – Chengdu
See the photos of this beautiful travel
Yunnan, Sichuan & Kham, October 2015 (part 1)
I enjoy reading your write up. Very interesting. Thanks for the info.
My pleasure. Thank you for your comment!