Terrace Builders

** THIS TOUR IS ALWAYS SCHEDULED AS A CONTINUATION OF THE KUNMING EXPERIENCE. We almost always receive our guests in Kunming and will spend a designated amount of time here, depending on your personal interests and the time available. Our first day on the TERRACE BUILDERS, we’ll transfer to Jianshui. In our itinerary we have assumed we travel from Mile; we’ll stay overnight there is a boutique guesthouse after our day trip in the Stone Forest.

This is what the standard version of this itinerary (Kunming Experience + Terrace Builders) looks like:

Day 1 – Arrival in Kunming
City sightseeing and culinary tour

Day 2 – Kunming – Stone Forest – Mile
Day trip to Stone Forest to meet the king of the water buffaloes in a Sani village, overnight in the resort town of Mile

Day 3 – Mile – Mengzi – Jianshui
Hot Springs visit, the best cross-the-bridge rice noodles in Yunnan, and arrival in Jianshui

Day 4 – Jianshui
Early morning tofu making, Confucian palace, in-depth alleyway culinary exploring

Day 5 – Jianshui – Shiping – Honghe
Visit Shiping and transfer to Honghe county town

Day 6 – Honghe
Day trip to the Ailao Mountains to see the rice terraces

Day 7 – Back to Kunming

This week-long trip plan can be squeezed into 6 days if you like, but we recommend staying 2 nights in Jianshui!

• For real rice terrace and southern Yunnan minority culture aficionados, we can extend the trip in the even more remote parts of the Ailao Mountains, to Luchun county. This would make your total trip about 10 days.
• The route can be connected to Ticket to the Tropics, which would extend the number of days to 12-13.

Please contact us for a tailored itinerary with many more details!

Weather description.

We always recommend our guests to be as active as possible. But obviously we stay within the limits of everyone’s ability. This route is extremely flexible and can be done almost entirely without any hiking or cycling.

But it is just gorgeous to hike through the rice fields and forests on our day trip into the Ailao Mountains. So if you are up for it, we can definitely schedule many day hikes throughout this route.

Also, this route can be done by bicycle. Completely cherry-picking all of our cycling routes, we can make both thrilling descents, shattering climbs or we can select more rolling hills. We can either only cycle the first day, or take bicycles with us for the whole trip. Daily amount of kilometers is completely flexible, from 20 kilometers up to a 100!

We’ll stay in a nice hotel with a hot spring service in Mile!

We’ll be staying in a very beautiful courtyard in Jianshui!

In Honghe County, we’ll stay in the only 4 stars hotel in the region!

For single travelers or couples, we will arrange an SUV or spacious sedan with a driver-guide if available.

for 3-4-5 guests, we will use a Buick GL8 or Chinese brand “DaTong”.

For 6 guests and up, we’ll be traveling with an 18-seat officially registered tourist van, operated by one of the best drivers in Yunnan, Dali local Yin Guangtao.

Mengzi is known for crossing the bridge rice noodles, really big and delicious!

We can’t miss the BBQ tofu in Shiping. Because the texture of tofu and the their dipping sauce is just amazing!

The Long-table feast is the traditional festival for Hani people.