LIJIANG
A beautiful small city with an old town of cute houses and streams running along every alley. Almost no Western tourists, nobody speaks English but locals invited us to eat and drink with them anyway. That kind of thing doesn’t happen when you’re surrounded by tourists.
Allow 2-3 days.
✈️ Getting There
Direct flight from Guilin with Xiamen Airlines, takes about 2 hours.
You can also get there by train with a connection in Kunming (~10-12 hours) but be careful: train tickets go through a pre-reservation phase and are only confirmed later. During Chinese school holidays trains are fully booked and you may not get a seat, that’s exactly what happened to us, so we ended up taking the flight.
Lijiang Old Town
UNESCO-listed, Naxi architecture, stone streets, small canals. Just wander.
- Sifang Street – the central square, good starting point
- Heilong Pool – a lake just north of the old town with a perfect reflection of the snow mountain.
- Go out at night with the lights on the old town
Yulong Snow Mountain & Blue Moon Valley
About 30km from the old town
- Yulong Snow Mountain – glacier massif at 5,596m, cable car up.
- Blue Moon Valley – turquoise glacial lakes at the foot of the mountain.
Usually combined in one full day
If You Have More Time
- Tiger Leaping Gorge – one of the deepest gorges in the world.
- Shuhe Ancient Town – quieter than Lijiang Old Town, 4km away, good for half a day.
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