I am looking to get from Datong to Lijiang and am wondering if anyone has any suggestions on the best way to get there. The best flight options I have found so far is to catch a flight between Taiyuan to Chengdu and then from Chendu fly to Lijiang. Does anyone know if there is a direct flight between either Datong or Taiyuan and any of the major centes in Yunnan province?

We are also looking at spending about 8 days in Yunnan province any suggestions on sites to see that may be off the beaten trail? Villages or nature/ culture/history related.

Thanks

I prefer trains to planes, so can't answer your first question - but you might look at flights via Kunming rather than Chengdu (although Chengdu is certainly worth visiting).

Lots to do in Yunnan, although Lijiang is unfortunately NOT off the tourist trail. You might find my TR - http://wilhelmswords.com/rtw2004/index.html - last entry - of interest for three places south of Kunming. Also, I took a bus from Lijiang to Dazu, at the far end of Tiger Leaping Gorge - that was certainly off the main trail. If you're feeling fit, hiking the gorge itself would be better.

Thank you for the TR, I checked out not only your Kunming report but also your other China reports. They are very interesting and offer some great ideas.

Since we are starting in Beijing and ending in Hong Kong and only have 17 days we decided to include a couple of domestic flights to maximize time. I figured if we could fly between Dutong (or nearby airport) and somewhere in Yunnan it would save us alot of time. We really want to spend as much time in Yunnan and the Guilin and Yangshuo area as we can.

I would love to hike the gorge but am not sure I can convince my travel partners to do the whole hike. Is there an opportunity to hike just part of the gorge?

Glad you liked the TRs! There is now a road at least part way into the gorge - check an up to date guidebook. You could also hike into one of the guesthouses and then hike out again the same way, I suppose. For a good description of the hike start here - http://palinstravels.co.uk/book-3540 For my still-unedited pix of the far end, including the boat you take across the river there, and Lijiang, see http://kwilhelm.smugmug.com/Travel/R...e-World-2004-5

I would caution you that, like Lijiang, Guilin is in no way off the tourist trail. For further flung places you might also take a look at these blogs http://meckleyearth.blogspot.com/ and http://meckleychina.blogspot.com/ from friends of mine who recently spent three years living in Shanghia (and one of whom is Chinese) - you may need to dig around a bit.

Thanks for the info. Thank goodness we still have 5 months to figure things out. There is so much to see and the delimna continues to be: do we cram in as many of the popular tourist spots as we can hopping from city to city or just choose 4 or 5 spots having more time at each. When we went to Beijing the last time some of the stand out memories included temples we just happened to come across while walking around. From reading your blog it seems as though there is alot to see in the Chengdu area, I am particularly interested in Qingchen Shan.

Qingchen Shan was a good experience, but if the weather had been better I had intended to head for Emei shan - but that takes longer and more energy...

I would really suggest cutting down the number of places, and not necessarily visiting tourist hot spots. Yes, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, the Terracotta Warriors are all worth seeing, but my loop south from Kunming was just as satisfying and arguably more interesting