Day 1: UNITED STATES
Today you fly from the United States to Beijing. (The flights from the U.S. to Xining, China are not included.)

Day 2: Beijing
Arriving in Beijing in the late afternoon you check into a hotel where a room will be waiting in your name. That evening we are met by an Earth River representative in the hotel lobby and go out for a welcome dinner.

Day 3: Beijing/Xining (or Lanzhou)
This morning we will transfer to the airport for the flight to Xining, where we will arrive in the late afternoon. Xining is a wonderful city inhabited by many different minorities on the edge of the Tibetan plateau. We spend the night in a hotel.

Days 4, 5 & 6: Xining/Tibetan Plateau/Yangtze River
Boarding a comfortable bus, we begin the 3 day drive to the river put-in. During the next 3 days we will drive past Tibetan villages and through vast grassy plains. We will see Tibetan herdsmen, their yaks and yurts dotting the green landscape. Carrying their homes on their yaks, these nomadic people endure by following the green grass from season to season. On the afternoon of the third day we will arrive at the put-in, rig the boats, and camp.

DAYS 7- 15: UPPER YANGTZE RIVER
As we float down the Yangtze for 9 days an incredible landscape opens; Tibetan eagles soaring over-head, snow-capped peaks, high plateau pastures strewn with
wildflowers, prayer flags (view) and mountains of sacred mani prayer stones (view) combine with some of the most exquisite Buddhist temples and monasteries in thesacred prayers (view) and walk the worn stones of Kora, turning prayer wheels at the 900-year-old temple of San Dup Monastery.(view) Inaccessibility, devoutness and the ability to endure have preserved a piece of Tibet "no one knows" through millennia of change in the outside world.(view) This is truly a spiritual journey to experience the cultural splendor of that Tibet.(view)

DAY 16: TIBETAN PLATEAU
Early this morning we meet the bus and drive to the Dunka Monastery. Nestled on a hill a thousand feet above the town of Yushu, the Dunka Monastery, where we will have breakfast as guests of the lama of Qinghai province (there are five such lamas in Tibet). Late in the morning we begin the drive back to Xining.

DAY 17: PLATEAU/ XINING
Late in the afternoon we arrive in Xining. The rest of the afternoon is free. We spend the night in a hotel.

DAY 18: XINING/ BEIJING
Today we transfer to the airport for the return flight to Beijing. Upon arrival we check into a hotel. The rest of the day is free to explore Beijing on your own. We meet up again in the evening for a farewell dinner and spend the night in a hotel.

DAY 19: BEIJING/ NORTH AMERICA
This morning we transfer to the airport for our flights home and arrive back in the USA on the same day, due to time zone change.

 

BACK TO UPPER YANGTZE CONTENTS (CLICK HERE)