Day 1: Arrive at Chengdu
We will welcome you at the airport and take you to your hotel. You are free to refresh and relax before we hold a briefing about the trip, later in the afternoon. With your guides, you will go through the itinerary and learn about local road safety and cultural considerations, as well as having the opportunity to ask us any questions you may have. After being fully briefed, in the evening, we will hold a welcome dinner to celebrate the beginning of your journey. We will feast on some of the best food Chengdu has to offer and eagerly anticipate the next trip that lies ahead.
Meals: Dinner
Overnight: Chengdu
Day 2: Wenjiang – Pixian
Departing from your hotel at 8AM, we will take a 1.5-hour drive to Wenjiang, a green and pleasant town on the edge of greater Chengdu and where we begin our cycling. Nicknamed ‘Chengdu’s Garden,’ it is famous for cultivating Sichuanese Bonsai trees, which have a rich history of over 1000 years. The most beautiful examples of these are grown from azalea’s, and the first 15km of our ride takes us past many garden centers specializing in this art, providing you with the opportunity to learn more about this tradition.
After 15km we will join the Wenjiang – Pixian greenway, which will take us to our riding destination of the day, The Sichuan Cuisine Museum. The greenway immediately brings you into rural Sichuan life, and this area is famous for cultivating spaces and restaurants for city dwellers to do what the Sichuanese do best; eat, relax, and play mahjong. Extremely quiet and peaceful, we will ride through small villages, farmlands, and bamboo while the Jiangan River occasionally comes into view, guiding us along. The only signs of life you are likely to see are people drinking tea and fishing.
At about 40km, we will reach a gorgeous old hamlet settled within a bamboo forest and this will mark the end of our riding through the varied scenery of the greenway. Shortly after we will arrive at the Sichuan Cuisine Museum for an afternoon of visiting one of the world’s most famous cuisines.
The museum is set within a beautiful complex with traditional buildings surrounding a well cultivated garden. We will then take a 30-minute drive to Dujiangyan, the city where we will spend the night.
Riding Distance: 43km
Elevation: +86m / -81m
Meals: All
Overnight: Dujiangyan
Sightseeing / Activities:Sichuan Cuisine Museum
Road Quality: Predominantly concrete or tarmacked greenways in good condition, with one short gravel track.
Day 3 Dujiangyan Panda Valley – Anren Ancient Town
We will start the day by taking a short drive to Dujiangyan Panda Valley and visiting the adorable giant pandas and cubs at this research base dedicated to rehabilitating pandas back into the wild. Panda Valley, although having fewer pandas, is much quieter than the research base in Chengdu city, allowing for a more intimate experience.
From Panda Valley, you will begin your ride on a calm country road, which provides views of the mountains marking the beginning of the Tibetan Plateau on your right. We will ride to Jiezi ancient town, historically one of the last cities before the Tibetan Plateau on the Tea Horse Road. You will spend some time exploring the alleyways and learning about the history of this vital riverside town, before sitting down to some traditional local food.
In the afternoon, our ride continues along one of Sichuan’s most beautiful, and less-explored, country roads, Chongqing Road. It will take you through beautiful countryside and villages before we finish the ride on the outskirts of Anren, dubbed ‘China’s Museum Town.’ We will drive the final 10km to Anren’s ancient town, where we will spend the night. With a more modern history than ancient other cities we will visit on this trip, being formed in the early 1900s, it is unique for having more of a focus on culture and education, with plenty of boutique shops, cafes, restaurants, and workshops to explore and enjoy in the evening.
Riding Distance: 73km
Elevation: +115m / -334m
Meals: All
Overnight: Anren Ancient Town
Sightseeing / Activities:
• Visit adorable giant pandas & cubs
• Jiezi Ancient Town
Road Quality: Predominantly tarmacked country roads in excellent condition
Day 4 Pingle Ancient Town – Shangli Ancient Town
We begin the morning by taking a 40-minute drive to the riverside town of Pingle. Pingle belongs to the county of Qionglai, which is one of the best regions for producing tea in all of Sichuan. Thus, it has historically been one of the most critical market towns along the ancient Tea Horse Road and the tea culture still stands strong to date. We will take a walk through the streets lined with traditional architecture to the riverside, which is lined with teahouses. The river banks here are very shallow, and in the summer, the teahouses set up tables and chairs so that the customers can soak their feet in the calm river while playing mahjong and sipping on an endless cup of tea.
From Pingle we continue our ride, and from here, our journey becomes more and more rural as we pass through stunning scenery and tree plantations. This section is more mountainous, and after 30km we will reach the most challenging part of the trip – a 7km ascent taking you over a beautiful tea terrace mountain at an altitude of 1500m.
The tough ascent rewards you with stunning views over the valley and a 3km descent, winding down the mountain and taking you to White Horse Spring, a temple housing a peculiar spring which has its tidal system. The tides of the spring are not fixed, sometimes happening several times a day and others not for days. However, the water level can dramatically change – it is said that when the water rises, it is accompanied by a sound like the wind blowing and, when it falls, it sounds like horse’s hooves clapping on the ground.
From here it is only 5km to reach Shangli Ancient town. Another market town on the Old Tea Horse Road, it is one of the first towns Tibetan traders would encounter on their journeys. It is peculiar for its beautiful stone bridges and for being one of the main places where tea was fermented and pressed into bricks, to be made suitable for the long and arduous journey to Tibet. Set amongst forested hills, with traditional wooden buildings and a river cutting through the town, it is extremely picturesque. After exploring the town, we will have dinner by the riverside and then take a 30-minute drive to a boutique hotel in Mingshan District of Ya’an city.
Riding Distance: 45km
Elevation: +1098m / -721m
Meals: All
Overnight: Ya’an
Sightseeing / Activities:
• Pingle Ancient Town
• White Horse Spring
• Shangli Ancient Town
Road Quality: Predominantly tarmacked country roads in excellent condition
Day 5: Caoba – Hongya
We begin the day by taking a 30-minute drive from the city to Caoba Town, where we mount up and continue our ride. Today we will mostly be following the beautiful Qingyi River, which runs to the following day’s destination, Leshan. The first 5km will take you through tea plantations with terraced tea farms until we reach the second of our two serious ascents of the trip. The rise winds up the mountainside through the occasional tea plantation for 5km until you reach stunning views and a 5km descent down to the reservoir on the opposing side.
The descent is thrilling and ends by taking you alongside the reservoir on your right with an imposing red rock cliff, full of prehistoric vegetation, on your left, bringing you to the ferocious rapids pouring out of Caoyutan Dam. Passing over the dam, we continue to follow Qingyi river, and with trees overhanging the road for much of the way, it makes for an enjoyable ride.
At around 30km we leave the country road behind us and join our first of three single-lane country tracks, which take us to the day’s finishing point, Hongya, and allow for a much more ‘off-road’ biking experience. All three provide a much more intimate look at riverside rural life as they wind through forestry, bamboo, and the occasional hamlet. The first closely follows the riverbanks, the second offers downhill riding through dense forestry, and the third takes you through a flat plain with small villages and open paddy fields. After leaving these tracks behind us, it is a short few kilometers to our hotel, which is set on the riverbank, allowing for a relaxing stroll to soak in all of the beauty seen in the day’s biking.
Riding Distance: 55km
Elevation: +402m / -476m
Meals: All
Overnight: Hongya
Sightseeing / Activities:
• Qingyi riverside riding
• Caoyutan Dam
Road Quality: The first half of the day is on tarmacked country roads in excellent condition and the second half is on smooth concrete tracks.
Day 6: Hongya – Leshan
After a short drive, we will begin our cycling by the riverside, quickly being surrounded by the beautiful Sichuanese countryside and again following the route of the Qingyi River, as it winds its way to Leshan. It is another day of varied scenery on a small road, with views alternating from the river and its cliffs to terraced tea plantations and dense forestry.
After 30km we will reach two historical sites, set side by side in the cliffs in the gorgeous scenery of the river. The first is the Sichuan Hand Made Paper Museum. And China is, of course, the first place in the world to have invented paper, and Chengdu is the first to use paper money in China. The museum comprises four exhibition halls set in buildings which more resemble a temple than a museum, and they guide you through China’s and the local region’s papermaking history.
A short walk along the riverside takes you to Jiajiang County’s Thousand Buddha Cliff. It is a particularly interesting Buddhist site in China, and, as you follow the red rock cliff alongside the river, you begin to see Buddhist inscriptions that were carved into the rock by scholars from the Tang and Song Dynasties. Soon after, you begin to see many Buddhas of varying sizes. Although many are missing heads, there are around 2,470 carved into the cliffside in total. Between 1500-2000 years old, they appeared during the same period as the famous Giant Buddha in Leshan. Far less visited than other Buddhist sites of this type, they are an excellent ‘off the beaten path’ example of this facet of Chinese and Buddhist history.
After our fill of the local history, we continue riding the final 33km to Leshan, home of the largest and tallest carved stone Buddha in the world. A highlight of this section of the ride comes around 20km after the Thousand Buddhas – we will take a gentle uphill on a small road that rewards you with stunning views of tea plantations tiered out around and below you. Not long after, we will join a dirt road following the river before driving the last 10km to the Giant Buddha. Built over 1200 years ago to watch over the quick rapids of the river below, the best way to see the Giant Buddha is from the river itself. We will take a short cruise to visit the site and appreciate the 71m carving calmly and majestically towering and watching out over above us.
Besides the Giant Buddha, Leshan is also famous for its food. Before retiring for the evening, we will sample some of its best, including such dishes as Sweet Skin Roast Duck and tasty Bo Bo Chicken.
Riding Distance: 64km
Elevation: +446m / -514m
Meals: All
Overnight: Leshan
Sightseeing / Activities:
• Sichuan Hand Made Paper Museum
• Thousand Buddha Cliff
• Leshan Giant Buddha
Road Quality: Predominantly small tarmacked country roads and concreted tracks with one 3km section of a dirt and gravel track.
Day 7: Leshan – Huanglongxi Ancient Town
The day begins with a 30-minute drive taking us to Guanmiao town, and the biking starts on a single lane road that quickly begins to guide you through farmlands, with mountains on your left. After a few kilometers, the Mingjiang River appears, which flows from the day’s destination, Huanglongxi Ancient Town.
We will ride through a valley following the river with some gentle climbs, and at 9km, we will come to a beautiful descent, which leads us towards some terraced paddy fields. The countryside continues until we reach Zhongyan Temple, which is inside a large park holding Buddhist carvings with over 1500 years of history. It is renowned for being a place of beauty and tranquillity, and over the centuries, scholars, Buddhists, and poets would pay homage to the site, leaving the inscriptions and carvings that we can still see to this day.
After taking a small hike inside the gardens to a natural spring inside, we will continue our ride through a bamboo-lined road, with the river and its large low-lying banks, accompanying us on the left, until we reach Yongshou township to finish the day’s ride. From Yongshou it is an hour’s drive to Huanglongxi, where we will spend the night.
Huanglongxi is another famous ancient town with a history reaching back 1,700 years. The town sets beside the river with three temples and winding alleyways. It provides a particularly quintessential example of an old village and, as such, is often chosen by producers as a film location. While a little is more touristy than ancient other cities we visit on this trip, it is beautiful, and the riverside teahouses are perfect for winding down after a day’s ride. The streets are lined with shops and local snacks, including the famous ‘one noodle noodles’; a bowl of noodles which contain a single long thick noodle pulled by vendors who put on elaborate dances, and shows, to entice customers to their restaurants.
Riding Distance: 55km
Elevation: +302m / -270m
Meals: All
Overnight: Huanglongxi Ancient Town
Sightseeing / Activities:
• Visit Zhongyan Temple
• Huanglongxi Ancient Town
Road Quality: Predominantly small tarmacked country roads.
Day 8: Huanglongxi – Xinglong Lake
We begin our final day of biking by riding straight from Huanglongxi Ancient Town for 20km to Tongzhi Dragon Kiln. We follow our last tranquil road taking us through the paddy fields, farmlands, and rural villages that form the suburbs of Southern Chengdu.
After winding through the countryside, we will reach Tongzhi Dragon Kiln and learn about traditional methods of pottery making. Built in the year of Tongzhi, the kiln has over 150 years of history and is still in use today. Traditional Chinese kilns are long in shape, resembling a dragon, providing them with their name, and the kiln is set within conventional buildings, which are littered with old earthenware pottery.
After our visit to the dragon kiln, we continue riding in the direction of Chengdu city and our final destination, Xinglong Lake. The area around the lake has been earmarked for development to meet the demands of the ever-increasing metropolis of Chengdu, and we will slowly begin to leave the countryside behind us as we approach it. For now, though, the area is still tranquil and peaceful, and we will conclude our week’s riding by navigating the circumference of the lake, before finishing and celebrating our achievements! Once you are ready to leave the bike behind firmly, we will drive you to your hotel for you to rest and rejuvenate before we join again in the evening for a final meal of celebration, accolades, and cheer.
Elevation: +84m / -102m
Meals: All
Overnight: Chengdu
Sightseeing / Activities:
• Tongzhi Dragon Kiln
• Xinglong Lake
Road Quality: Predominantly tarmacked country roads in excellent condition
Day 9 Fly off from Chengdu
Your last day is free for you to relax and enjoy as you wish in Chengdu. Of course, please let us know if you have any special requests and we will always do our best to accommodate you. After spending your day enjoying the remaining time you have in Sichuan, we will take you to the airport and bid you farewell!
Meals: Breakfast
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