Adventure Travel in China

Sichuan into Yunnan: Border Crossings and Travel Routes

Post by Marco FerraresecloseAuthor: Marco Ferrarese Name: Marco Ferrarese
Email: info@monkeyrockworld.com
About: Marco Ferrarese has been teaching English, living and travelling around East, South and South East Asia since 2007. An underground musician and writer for many years, he has lived in Europe, the USA, China and Australia and is currently based in Malaysia. He has explored 22 of the 34 provinces by train, foot, rickshaw and any other overland form of transportation. He writes for CnAdventure Blog and has published a book about his Chinese adventures in Italian language.See Authors Posts (32)

These two provinces represent to many the best scenery and trips in all of China. Although bordering and having shared natural resources and mountain ranges which blend into each other, Sichuan and Yunnan are not that easily accessible, if not by train with the popular (and definitely “boring”) province capital route Chengdu-Kunming.

From Chengdu, there is a direct sleeper train to Kunming; this is useful to move in-between the two capitol cities, but there are a few other routes over the mountains making the cross into the two provinces more rewarding and direct, although more lengthy.

Route 1: Chengdu-(Leshan-Emei Shan)-Xichang-Yunnan trough Lugu Hu

Take the night sleeper trsin from Chengdu to Xichang in southern Sichuan. There is only one bus a day from Xichang to Lugu Hu, Sichuanese side, leaving at 8.40 am. Try to time your arrival in Xichang around 6.30/7 am, and take bus 12 from the square in front of the train station, on your left side. In the tal case you arrive during the night, fear not. Get out of the station and look on your left, there is a hotel there with decent doubles for 60/70 rmb. Although the communal toilets are quite grubby, the beds are clean and comfy and bus 12 stops in the square in front of it. For 1 yuan, bus 12 will take you to the bus station, and starts running around 7 am.

From Xichang to Lugu Hu is a 7 hours drive along scenic mountain roads and cliffs, passing by a number of small villages with a high density of Tibetan and other minorities’ population. A whole sightseeing trip by itself, and highly recommended.

Route 2: Chengdu- Kanding-(Litang)-Xiangcheng-Yunnan trough Shangri-La (Zhongdian)

This route through the wilds of Western Sichuan gets over the Southern part of the Tibet-Sichuan highway, and has to be taken seriously. Long rides, bitter cold and great altitude changes can make this trip quite hard. From Chengdu to Kanding, it’s 8 hours on a newly built highway, fast and reliable. This cannot be unfortunately said for the rest of the trip, especially if you will venture up northwest to Litang, one of the highest cities in the world at 4100 meters and pretty cold all year round. This is Kham territory, or better Tibet outside of the TAR. We’ll talk more about this in a separate post. From Litang, Xiangcheng is the next stop. Beware that some travelers reported that buying bus tickets for this leg of the trip had been difficult, and private cars are very expensive, so be prepared for the worst. This also applies from the Xiangcheng to Yunnan leg of the trip where, instead, it appears there is one daily morning bus to the Sichuanese side. But always do not count on it until you are there. This trip isn’t recommended for those in a hurry, and should be overtaken slowly to get acquainted with the high Tibetan altitudes.

Whatever you decide, both trips require a good dose of patience, nerves and adaptation time wise. Do not attempt to follow these routes if you are in a rush, go to Kunming first, and move back from there