Most reviews of Yangtze River<\/strong> cruises were largely positive, but there were also indications suggesting that what we’d be seeing would not be too different from what we’d already seen two years ago at Halong Bay. Moreover, we would also not be seeing lush greenery and autumn colors during the sailing. The sailing dates and cities of embarkation and disembarkation also posed difficulties, as we’d essentially be orienting our entire trip around being in those cities on specific dates.<\/p>\n Guilin<\/strong> is also one of the very popular and picturesque places in the country, but our reading about the place revealed that it looks less spectacular in winter months, with selected spots either coated in brown or grey, or possibly even inaccessible.<\/p>\n We also considered doing the closing segment of the trip in Beijing<\/strong>. The city is huge, very modern, and built-up with plenty of things to see and do. And I’d not visited the Great Wall either. But including Beijing would mean a trek across half of the country from where the first half (or more) of our itinerary would be.<\/p>\n Zhangjiajie<\/strong>, made famous as the inspiration for the floating mountains of Pandora in James Cameron’s first Avatar film, was a hard place to drop. The views are to die for, but it was also a little out of the way if we were centering our trip on the western side of the country. Moreover, a comparison between the two places basically led us to conclude one key thing: Jiuzhaigou National Valley<\/strong> would be offering more scenery variety.<\/p>\n We’ve finally narrowed down our places to two areas though: Yunnan and Western Sichuan, and only Jiuzhaigou from the initial bucket list was retained. The considerations that led to that:<\/p>\n One tour operator we talked to early on about an 8 day trip with Jiuzhaigou suggested we visit Western Tibet and included a trip to the Mt. Everest Base Camp. No, we’re not quite ready for the latter, but it did introduce to us the possibility of touring a Western Sichuan<\/strong> itinerary.<\/p>\n Further exploration led us to discover Yunnan<\/strong> as a popular region for travelers to spend a week in, and they routinely cover the same route: the city of Dali<\/strong> to Lijiang<\/strong> and finally to Shangri-La<\/strong>. The spots of interest in all three cities are largely scenic with good variety, and apart from a few places in the three cities, would not be expected to be too crowded in December.<\/p>\n The plateaus of Western Sichuan were especially of interest to me, as the area is vast and traveler density is relatively low. And most importantly, assuming that I’m not incorrect, there would be abundant opportunities for me to fly drones \u2014 a key activity I’m really hoping to do this December.<\/p>\n Most Western Sichuan itineraries start and end in Chengdu<\/strong> and are between 4 to 7 days. A check on the map and traveling distances noted that our terminal point in the Yunnan itinerary \u2014 Shangri-La \u2014 isn’t very far from the route the Western Sichuan itinerary would cover.<\/p>\n So, we went to several tour operators to explore whether it would be viable to do an arc-like travel loop that starts in Dali, and gradually make our way north across Yunnan, then into Western Sichuan, and finish in Chengdu \u2014 rather than complete the Yunnan tour that ends in Shangri-La, then fly to Chengdu to start the Western Sichuan itinerary. Some tour operators strongly advised us immediately against trying to do this loop, explaining that traveling distances by road vehicle would be really long, and that a 13\u201314 day combined itinerary would be really tough on the kids. Other operators were more circumspect, observing that it is indeed a little challenging in view of the month we’re traveling, but still doable.<\/p>\n Our own analysis was basically objective: would we be saving time and costs if we did a combined Yunnan and Western Sichuan itinerary? And it seemed to be a ‘yes’ on both counts. But we’re still mindful of what the various operators have advised us, and have yet to reach a firm decision on which of these two broad itineraries to adopt \u2014 a decision we’ll probably make in a few weeks.<\/p>\n The other thing we’ll be sorting out very soon is flights. Basically, we’re fairly set on starting both options of tours in Dali. The problem is that there is no direct flight from Singapore to Dali, so most travelers from here would fly into Kunming first \u2014 a city south and about two hours away by high-speed rail to Dali. But there are two airlines that fly direct to Kunming with our target flight timings: one is China Eastern, which at this moment is charging an atrocious ~$900\/pax fare for a fairly short flight. The other is Scoot, which has yet to release its flights for the month of December. Our back-up plan, if both direct flight possibilities fail, would be to take one of the alternate flights with a stopover. We’re hoping it wouldn’t come to that as it’d mean additional overhead time spent unnecessarily just to get to our starting point, but we’ll know soon enough. And depending on which flight we can get, this trip to Yunnan and Western Sichuan would be either 20 or 21 days \u2014 our longest family vacation yet!<\/p>\n More to come soon!<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There’s been a lack of posts over the last few months about our year-end travel intentions, and it’s been largely because the wife made a comment that had me going back to look up my old drawer itineraries. And that<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/blog-2025-china-itinerary-01.jpg\")
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