Guided Tour
“Zhangye, Badain Jaran and Xining” was a “8 days guided tour by “China Discovery” a Chengdu based tour agency. This 8 days guided tour was coupled with another “10 days Tibet tour” by the same Agency. The total cost of the two guided tours running back to back was ¥22681 per person. This cost did not include flights, meals and tips to guide and driver and was based on 4 travellers on the first 6 days and 5 travellers on the rest of the trip.
Generally we did find the cost “higher” than expected but it could be due to our customisation and selection of higher “stars” accommodation.
Impression Zhangye
In Zhangye we were very impressed by the Danxia and Canyons. They were immense landscapes so huge so unimaginable until seen. Of the two Danxia, Rainbow Danxia was more stunning and would be best seen near sunset time.
In Zhangye we visited Mati Temple an ancient temple built into the cliff and this attraction met our expectation absolutely. For years we had seen such stunning ancient temple carved dangerously on cliff side and to be able to witness and explore it on site and felt that the pictures we saw was not hyped up was satisfying!
Badain Jaran Deserts
In Badain Jaran Deserts we saw pink lakes! The lakes were huge, the colors were stunning and lakes in desert were “concepts” that did not exist in our “brains” till we see it with our own eyes.
We wished we had more days in the desert to see its beauty at the best weather condition. We did not manage to see both sunrise and sunset during our trip.
Yining
In Yining we visited QingHai Lake which was the largest salt water lake in China. QingHai Lake though beautiful did not impress us very much. We believed if we had more time/days and were able to visit other parts of the lake and not to be limited to just the standard touristic area of the lake we would see the more beautiful QingHai.
Chaka Salt Lake was beautiful but it had become too touristy (pack with people).
Taer Monastery
Taer Monastery was okay, the temples/hall structures were magnificient and the yak butter sculpture displays were an “eye opener” !
Could we do the 8 days trip on our own
Many years ago we did a 20 days trip to Sichuan on our own without going through a tour agency. Booking hotels was not an issue as we were able to book them on ctrip.com. We moved around by long distance buses and taxis and purchase attraction tickets on sites. At that time, after the trip we felt that China long distance transport system was too “inconvenient” and “tiresome”. It was difficult to prior book them online, we had to walk into bus station or get hotel staff to do the booking, alot of uncertainties. This trip with a tour agency was an exploration investigation to find out has the time arrived for us to travel independently in China conveniently and comfortably.
The conclusion was we could even do this Zhangye and Xining part of this trip independently on our own. Attraction tickets could be easily bought online on trip.com (English version on ctrip.com). Similarly hotel listings were plentiful on Trip.com. Fast train were frequent and on time for long distance commute and local buses and taxis were easily available. E-hail was so easy too. Attraction tickets with two ways transfer to towns/cities were available on trip.com or Getyouguide.
As for visiting Badain Jaran Desert one would have to go with a local tour agency as a Border Pass (边境通行证) would be needed, At this stage a foreigner could not independently applied for the Border Pass. China was opening up very fast to foreigner for tourism. Many countries were already on the 30d ay visa free list.. hopefully in the near future foreigner tourist could apply for border pass without going through to a local agency.
We were so excited with all the great improvement and looked forward to planning many independent (DIY) trips to the different parts of China with more days added to our heart contend, limited only by the 30days free visa. We might even apply for visa if our itineraries went beyond 30days!!