A long trip from Dali to Lijiang

For visiting the Jade Dragon Snow National park, a AAAAA rated national park (highest category), we did not want to change hotels and move to Lijiang, therefore, we decided to have a day trip.

We started early, 7am. We booked a taxi with driver for the whole day.

The park is small but nevertheless amazing. It takes only about 30 minutes to walk around the small lakes, but if you have time, you can easily spend 1-2 hours. You have to show your local health code app and WeChat travel history as well as sign in on a paper form.

Around 11am, the road was clear again, so we went to the park. The entrance fee was 50 RMB/Person just to get into the park.

We stopped at the Ganhaizi Parking area. It is the farthest point you can reach by car, from there on, you can only move by bus or some small electric cars for smaller distances. The parking area is huge and leads to the main area. There are a lot of shops and also the ticket offices and waiting areas to get to the scenic spots. Most signs are in Chinese and English language so it is easy to get around. The staff did not speak English, so you should speak some basic Chinese or have a translation app ready. For the tickets and almost everything else you will need your passport for registration and your local and WeChat health code apps.

First, we went to the blue moon river first, which is a 10-15 minute bus drive for 20 RMB/Person. You have to take the 2nd stop of the bus, the first one is near another cableway which goes up to some meadow. Theres another „Yak“ meadow another bus ride away (probably another 15 minutes by bus) which we did not take.

For the blue moon river, depending on how much time you spend on photos, you should consider 1-2 hours.

At the Blue moon lake, about in the middle, there is a great photo spot where you can sit on a yak under a (fake) cherry blossom tree and a traditional hut, with the lake and mountains in the background. The price is 100 RMB/person with Yak, and 50 RMB/person without.

We walked back to the cable car station (15 minute walk, you can also go by electric vehicle if you don’t feel like walking) and up to the Meadow by the cable car. There is a round path around which takes about 20 minutes to walk.

Finally, around 16:00 we tried to get some tickets to the glacier, where we had been told should be ordered online at least 2 days before (normally you should do that, there is a limited number of people allowed up there) Luckily, the number was not reached today, so we got 2 tickets (140RMB/person). The cableway goes up to around 4400m and you have to walk the rest up to 4680m. It is doable without additional oxygen, which is offered plenty in small pressure bottles along the way.

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For dinner, we can recommend a place called „Avocado“ or Niuyouguo in Chinese. (Link to Apple Maps)

After 5 days of chinese food (which was amazing) we still wanted to have some western food for a change. So we went for Guacamole and 2 Pizzas, which were delicious. They had some nice Russian beer, which tasted like lager. The prices were also reasonable, the whole dinner was 160 RMB for 2 persons.

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Our day was really packed due to all the driving and left us basically only 6 hours.

• 10:30 – 11:00 Black Dragon Pool Park
• 11:00 – 11:30 Drive to National Park main area
• 11:30 – 12:00 Buy tickets and get some basic orientation
• 12:00 – 12:15 drive to blue moon lake
• 12:15 – 14:00 stay at the blue moon lake / photos
• 14:00 – 14:30 was back to cable car station + small break
• 14:30 – 15:30 drive up to another area and take a small hike
• 15:30 – 16:00 drive back to main area
• 16:00 – 16:30 drive up to the glacier (ca, 4,500m)
• 16:30 – 17:15 walk up to 4,680m and back down to the top station
• 17:15 – 17:30 Coffee break
• 17:30 – 18:00 Drive back to main area
• 18:30 – 19:30 Dinner
• 3 hours back to Dali

So seeing this schedule, we would definitely recommend anyone who want to visit the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain National Park to stay at least 1 or 2 nights in Lijiang in order to really enjoy the park.

There are also 2 „ancient cities“ in Lijiang, which we could not visit, but are supposed to be very nice.