EdEdwards

Thinking about flying Shenzhen to Lijiang (via Kunming of course) in October, and going on from there in a few days to Guilin (Yangshuo, actually). I've noticed that it would be, of course, geographically out of the way to fly to Guilin from Lijiang through Kunming. It's a long shot, but does anyone know if there might be bus or rail service from Lijiang east to Guilin?

rkkwan

You need to check your map. First, going through Kunming is not out of the way. Second, there is no train tracks to Lijiang. Third, the area is pretty mountainous, so a bus ride will take very very long.

Since there's no non-stop flight between Lijiang the Guilin, flying through Kunming is the most sensible way.

Nywoman

While doing my research, the best I could find was going Guilin to Kunming by night train and then flying into Dali, and take a bus to Lijiang.

After having received terrific advice from several people on this board I revised my travel schedule and came up with this solution.

EdEdwards

I'm having trouble finding a detailed map in English, rk - so if you have any links I'd appreciate them, for a better map! In the meantime, it looked like I needed to triangulate south to change planes in Kunming, en route to Guilin - but I figured that the area directly between Lijiang and Guilin is probably pretty rugged and likely without good through roads.

rkkwan

Ed - Guilin is about 475 miles due east from Kunming, while Lijiang is 200 miles NW of Kunming. You are not backtracking or adding much flying distance.

But more important is how one can get into and out of Lijiang. Like I said, there's no train, and the main road out of Lijiang goes south to Dali before turning east to Kunming anyways.

The mountains just SE of Lijiang goes over 10,000ft. There's no "shortcut".

For a simple map that shows the relationship of those three places, here's one:

www.travelchinaguide.com/map.htm

Shanghainese

I wonder if you should fly from Shenzhen to Guilin/Yangshou first, then fly to Lijiang via Kunming, rkkwan, what do you think?

EdEdwards

Thanks for the map. It's better than what I've been using.

There's no question it would be sensible to fly to Guilin first, then on to Lijiang via Kunming -- especially because we'll be going on to Shanghai after that. However, we're meeting friends in Guilin on a specific date, so we need to do whatever we want independently prior to that date. I'm thinking now, looking at the flight possibilities, that it might be too harried for us to fly to Lijiang and then back to Guilin as we were thinking -- since we'd only have one full day in Lijiang, and that it might be better just to spend the additional 3 days around Yangshuo? Any thoughts about this, rkkwan, Shanghainese, et al, would be appreciated.