Lijiang Travel Forum

There is now a china holiday the first weekend of june... should i avoid going to lijiang at that time? how many days enough before heading to tiger leaping gorge and zhongdian? i have 6-7 nites to spend all together. thank you!

Lijiang is a very touristic city, so yes, I'd avoid going there during a chinese holiday.The Leaping Gorge is on the way to Zhongdjan, so 6 nights are enough, I would spend most time in Zhongdjan anyway, less touristic and some really nice day trips from there.

i was hoping that this holiday wouldn't put too many people on the road. wishful thinking. thank you!

If you're thinking of traveling anywhere during a Chinese national holiday, make your reservations as far in advance as possible. Everyplace will be jam-packed.

Lijiang is indeed very popular with domestic Chinese tourists. Zhongdian perhaps slightly less so, but growing since they renamed it to "Shangri-La" and started promoting tourism so heavily. If you want to go I'd split time roughly equally. If you're not planning on hiking Tiger Leaping Gorge (and I wouldn't when it's really crowded), you can stop on the trip between Lijiang and Zhongdian. Most of the tourist buses stop for lunch at a truck-stop town right at the gorge, a pretty spectacular view is only a few minutes walk from there.

Are you refering to the Dragon Boat Festival? To be honest noone really knows how it will affect the amount of local chinese tourist heading to lijiang. Even this May Labour day (shorten from 7 days to 3 days) most inns here in Lijiang are afraid to report a definate room rate as most of the inn owners here want to see the amount of tourists heading to lijiang and what their fellow inn owners do before committing as they are afraid if they sprout the usual peak rates and there isn't enough demand or give a rate that is too low and lose out.

For tiger leaping gouge, it really depends on what you wanna do there. some people take a 2 day/1 night hike, some just take a day trip. Just sightseeing Lijiang and most of the nearby sights can easily take a week, more if you want to take it easy. If you intend to head to shangerila(2-3 days), meili snow mountain (4 days usually), lugu lake (2-3 days) than you can easily add another week to your trip.