Cycling & Hiking in Yunnan - China

Route Overview

I stayed in a hotel close to Lijiang Airport and rode around 60km from there to Shuhe. I stayed for six nights in Shuhe, spending the time exploring the area, including Lijiang and Shuhe old towns. I did a pleasant circular ride to Wenhai Lake, and also did a couple of fantastic hikes.



I then headed north, circling around the 5,600m high Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (Yulong National Park) into Tibet. This was an amazing ride at high altitude, with super views of the peaks throughout. From the northern edge of the Yulong National Park I also hiked the well known trail along Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Back on the bike I turned south, following the Yangtze River to Shigu, before crossing mountains to the charming historic towns of Jianchuan and Shaxi. The final leg of my trip continued south, riding alongside Erhai Lake into the larger city of Dali. From Dali I packed up my bike and took a train to Kunming, where I would stay for a few nights before flying to Thailand.

Cycle Touring in China

Communicating

As I mentioned, this was my first time riding in China, but I had visited the country several times before. I knew that English would not be widely spoken (even in touristy areas), that internet access can be complicated and that paying for things can also be tricky.

My Chinese is extremely basic: I can order food, understand numbers and ask a few simple questions, but that is all. So I was going to have to rely on apps for communication.

Before arriving, I downloaded two translation apps (Google and Baidu - including offline Chinese dictionaries), as well as Baidu Maps, Wechat and Alipay. I consider all of these pretty much essential for travelling in China, if you plan to leave the major cities.

However, this is only the start. Many Western websites are blocked in China (including Google, WhatsApp, Youtube, Wikipedia and many others). This can be circumvented by using roaming on your own sim card, by using a Chinese sim card with a good VPN, or by using a Hong Kong sim card. I purchased a Chinese sim card at Shenzhen airport, which I would use with a VPN - this worked, but was very slow. So I also activated a roaming package I had on my Orange Spanish sim card, which generally worked well, but occasionally when using Wechat I had to switch to the chinese sim to make it work.



Now, even once you have circumvented China's great firewall, you will still need to adapt a bit. Google Maps, for example, is useless in China - roads and points of interest are simply in the wrong place. Baidu maps is much better for finding places, but is only in Chinese - so you will need to use it alongside a translation app. Open street map works well for route planning - trails and roads are generally very accurate there - although elevation data can be quite a bit out.

Finally, the other two very important apps are Alipay and Wechat. These are multipurpose apps that you use to pay; businesses in China generally don't accept Visa or Mastercard (or often cash), so you have to link your card and pay via these apps. I'm sure there are plenty of tutorials on the internet showing how this works. Through Alipay you can also easily use Didi, which is like a Chinese version of Uber and is very convenient for getting around. On Alipay in Kunming and Xiamen, I have also used the Hello Bike app, which allows you to use the city e-bike scheme.

In addition to making payments, Wechat can also be used as a messenger service similar to WhatsApp. This is great for communicating with hotels, taxis, restaurants or anyone else, as it can translate the messages in real-time.

I apologise for spending so much time discussing this, but I can't emphasise enough how much you will come to rely on these apps in China - particularly outside the major cities.

Food & Water

One of the things I was looking forward to most in Yunnan was sampling the delicious food, and it didn't disappoint. Like many Chinese regions, Yunnan's cuisine is based largely around rice and noodles, with Crossing the Bridge Noodles, being the iconic local dish. There are also plenty of hotpots (with wild mushrooms being a particular speciality in Lijiang and Shaxi) and fish stews.

There is a big influence from the neighbouring region Sichuan, with a lot of immigration from there to the Lijiang area in recent years. This was a very pleasant surprise to me, since the numbing Sichuan peppercorns and delicious toasted chilis are some of my favourite flavours in the world!



Breakfasts in hotels typically consists of rice congee with various toppings, sweet potato or noodles. In the larger towns, however, there are cafes and bakeries where you can get more western style breakfasts if you prefer.

There were not too many large supermarkets on this route, apart from at the start and end in Lijiang and Dali. Snacks for cycling such as cookies, chocolate, cereal bars could easily be bought in most small villages. The tourist towns also sold the local speciality - flower cakes - which would certainly give you a lot of energy to get up the climbs! Tap water is generally not drinkable, although hotel rooms all have kettles so you can boil it if you want. Beer was sold in nearly every restaurant - avoid the local Dali brand, and try to seek out Shangri-La, which was by far my favourite of the ubiquitous lagers!

Finally, make sure to sample Yunnan's most famous drink - tea. There are many different varieties, and I would recommend attending a tea tasting if you have the chance.

Roads and Traffic

The roads were generally of excellent quality. I tried to avoid main roads, but the secondary and minor roads I took were nearly all well paved. There were a couple of short gravel and cobbled sections, but these could be avoided by tweaking the route slightly.

Car drivers were extremely considerate. Most larger roads have a wide hard shoulder which acts as a cycling lane, but even without that, cars passed with plenty of room and usually at a slow pace. I can't think of any close passes or near misses at all in my three weeks riding here.

The one minor annoyance was that several times I had to adjust the route on the fly as roads were closed due to construction work. This is just something you will have to deal with in China. New buildings, bridges, railway lines and motorways are popping up at such a pace, that inevitably you will try to take a road at some point that will no longer exist or that will be a building site.

Weather

I was a bit apprehensive about travelling to such high elevation in the middle of winter. The climate graph for Lijiang in December and January suggests that day time highs of around 15°C - 20°C were typical, while at night temperatures could head down to freezing. The highest point of the route was around 1,000m higher than Lijiang.

It was difficult to know what this would really mean in terms of cycling. I had relatively warm gear with me (a jacket, waterproof trousers, thin neoprene gloves), but wasn't prepared for heavy snow! The good news was that this was the dry season - I had one day of rain in the entire three weeks.



As it turned out the temperatures were great for cycling. I made relatively late starts (typically around 11am), by which time it was pretty warm, and it continued getting warmer until the middle of the afternoon. Even descending the mountain passes from 3,200m was fine - although I did put on a couple of extra layers!

I think the weather could be even better in Spring or in October, but there is a higher risk of rain. The region is also a lot more crowded then with tourists (almost unbearably so from pictures I have seen of Lijiang and Dali), so it certainly has advantages coming in winter.

Safety

China in general is an incredibly safe country to travel around, and Yunnan is no exception. There is no dangerous wildlife you are likely to encounter, I don't even remember being chased by any dogs. However, such high mountains always deserve respect, particularly if you leave the roads to do some gravel riding or hiking.

Logistics

Getting into China was extremely straight forward. In 2024 they allowed 30 day Visa free access from a huge list of countries (check online for the latest info, because it changes regularly). So I simply turned up with my passport and was stamped in - no hotel reservations or proof of return flights were requested as they were on my previous trips to China. I flew into Lijiang airport, arriving in the evening. I decided to stay at a hotel nearby which offered pick up from the airport. Communication was done through Wechat, and the manager of the hotel was waiting when I arrive. He had kindly brought an extra agricultural vehicle with him, to make sure the bike box would fit! This was the first of many positive experiences of Yunnan locals going above and beyond to try to help me during the trip.

My bike for this trip was a custom built Sardinha Nordest, with titanium frame and carbon fibre fork. It had a 1x12 Shimano SLX grouset (34 tooth chainring) and I put on 38mm Schwalbe Almotion tubeless tyres. I was planning to stay mostly on paved roads both here and on other trips I had planned in the region (in North Vietnam and Thailand). I anticipated there would be a few gravel and single track sections, but not enough to justify bringing wider tyres or front suspension.

I carried two panniers (one large Vaude and one lightweight Altura), as well as a large handlebar bag. I felt like I had overpacked a bit, but was aware of the possibility of cold and wet weather both in Northern Vietnam and in China at this time of year.

Overall, this set up worked without any problems at all.




At the end of the trip I took the train from Dali to Kunming, where I stayed for a few days before flying to Bangkok. I had read online that I would be able to send my bike with the train's consignment service or using China Railway Express delivery. This turned out not to be possible, and I had to find an alternative option which I detail in the last route description.

To get from Kunming to the airport with a bike box, I used the Huolala app. This is like Uber, but for vans, and worked really well. The alternative was to risk booking a six seater Didi, but I'm not sure the bike box would have been able to fit inside.

Alternative Routes

My initial plan had been to ride across the border from Vietnam into China at Hekou. From there I would ride along the historic railway line towards Pingbian, then onto Honghe (Mengzi) and the historic city of Jianshui. I was then looking forward to visiting the rice terraces, before working my way north to Kunming.

I think this would have been a very enjoyable and accessible route, although not as spectacular as the one I ended up doing. I also considered riding down from Dali at the end of this route to Xishuangbanna, but the warm weather and the slower pace of Thailand proved to be too much of a temptation.

As for the route I did, one option I seriously considered was to head further north from Tiger Leaping Gorge to Shangri-La. This would have been quite tough riding through the mountains, and I ultimately decided against it because I was concerned that it would be too cold further north at such high elevations. It looks a fantastic region for riding in Spring or Autumn though.