Southwest China Field Trip: A 40-Hour Train Ride To Start
All this week, Jaunted special embed Claire Duffett will be relaying the joys and jumbles of her travels through Southwest China including Tibet. Today, a marathon of train travel:
From China’s massive northeastern cities, we traveled by 40-hour train to the Yunnan Province in the country’s southwest, where the landscape and the people all transform into a varied amalgam of Han Chinese, Tibetan, and minority influences.
The area is one of China’s most diverse and it converges with the Tibetan plateau, giving it snow-peaked mountains and a multitude of cultures. We then turned northward from the province’s forgettable capital, Kunming, through valleys, around mountains, stopping in the historic towns of Dali, Lijiang, and “Shangri-La,” the town China renamed after the fictional utopia from James Hilton’s Lost Horizon.
Alongside many Chinese tourists, westerners generally pass through these three mountain villages en route to Sichuan province in the north, where travelers fly or train out from the western hub of Chengdu. Between them are plenty of opportunities to cycle, hike, and ride cable cars through rural passes and to snow-capped peaks.
You can also take in some Tibetan culture, without having to secure a permit, pay vast sums of cash, and be followed around by a guide like you must do in the official Tibet Autonomous Region. Of course this was what we chose to do, and what we're be sharing with you the rest of this week.
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· China Travel Coverage [Jaunted]
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