Chengdu to Yushu in five days: pandas, grassland, monasteries, and the southern road down the Jinsha

Names of guesthouses, restaurants and valleys are given in English with the Chinese in brackets — tap the bracket to copy it, so you can show it to a driver or a waiter.

This is the sixth route on this notebook, and the shortest way I know to cross the whole of northern Kham in one line: you start in the Sichuan basin and finish a province away, up on the grassland plateau, without ever doubling back. It is the same country as the five-day loop for the first two days, and then it turns north and does not come home.

The reason to do it is the last afternoon. Everyone drives Dêgê to Yushu the same way — north through Sershul, along the main road. I went south instead, down the Jinsha on the G215 through Luoxu 洛须 ⧉, which is where the old kingdom of Dengke used to be. It is narrower, it has far fewer places to stop, and it is the only part of this trip where I felt I was somewhere the guidebooks haven't been.

How the five days fit together

Day	Where you sleep	The point of the day
D1	Zhonglu, Danba	Pandas at Shenshuping, over the pass, the watchtower valleys of Danba — and Jiaju, the stop I had to cut
D2	Tagong (about 3,700 m)	Up onto the grassland: Tagong and Muya monasteries, the Jiagulong mani pile, then roast barley and butter tea in a monk's house
D3	Ganzi	A 1650 Gelug monastery at Luhuo, Kasa Lake, and the 37-metre stupa in Ganzi — plus a hot spring in the evening
D4	Dêgê	Ganzi Monastery (you can skip it), charge the car at Manigango, then up to Kathok
D5	Yushu	The Dêgê printing house, then the southern G215 road along the Jinsha into Yushu, with Gyegu Monastery before you drop into town

Day 1 — Chengdu to Zhonglu: the loop's first two days in one

We left Chengdu at about 8:00. This day covers what the five-day loop spreads over two: out past Yingxiu and Gengda for the pandas, over the pass, and down into the Zhonglu valley in Danba to sleep.

Pandas at Shenshuping

From Chengdu you go west towards Yingxiu, then up to Gengda, where the panda base at Shenshuping 卧龙神树坪熊猫基地 ⧉ sits. Leave at 8:00 and you're there by about 10:00; entry is roughly ¥150 a person. The pandas are kept in large wooded enclosures, not concrete cages — and this is your first real change of scenery of the trip.

Photo note: the pandas don't perform. Shoot the ones that are awake, then move on — there's a mountain to cross.

The pass at Maobiliang

Higher up, Maobiliang 猫鼻梁 ⧉ is the classic viewpoint for the Four Girls Mountains: four snow peaks in a row, with the highest, Yaomei Feng, standing behind the other three. You spend most of the climb inside cloud, and the only question is whether it lifts.

Photo note: this is a weather window, not a scheduled stop. If the peaks come out while you're there, shoot then — twenty minutes later they may be gone.

Jiaju — planned, and cut

The plan for the day was to look at Jiaju, one of Danba's famous watchtower villages, and sleep in Zhonglu. We ran out of time and went straight to Zhonglu instead. I've left it in the text because it's a real decision you'll face: Jiaju and Zhonglu sit in different valleys, and doing both in one day is too much.

Where you sleep: Zhonglu, Danba

A Tibetan manor in Zhonglu, the same one I stay in on the loop — timber throughout, facing the Merduo holy mountain. It's lower than the pass, and the valley is built for sleeping heavily in.

Photo note: a travel day. Only the panda base is a proper stop, so most of the pictures come from the car — the pass, the river valleys, and the first moment the watchtowers appear from above. Keep the camera to hand and the window clean. The watchtower villages want early or late light; at midday they flatten into the hillside.

Day 2 — Zhonglu to Tagong: grassland, two monasteries, one mani pile — and a kitchen

We left at about 9:00, and this is where the trip changes character. Through Danba town, up past the Yala Snow Mountain viewpoint, over the Geda Liangzi pass at around 4,200 m, and down through Bamei to Tagong. Somewhere in there the gorges and forest give way to open flats and grass — that switch is the reason this road is worth driving.

We reached Tagong at about noon and parked in front of Tagong Monastery 塔公寺 ⧉.

Tagong Monastery

A Sakya monastery, built around a life-size twelve-year-old Buddha. Only one hall in the whole complex asks you to take your shoes off and forbids photography; the others you can walk into shod, but don't photograph the images. Outside, people prostrate and make offerings — ask before you shoot them. The monastery's history, its mandala and its vajra are written up on the five-day loop page; I won't repeat them here.

Muya Monastery

About 15 minutes by car — Muya Monastery 木雅大寺 ⧉. A Nyingma monastery laid out like a campus: a great classroom in the middle, dormitories and a refectory on either side. Park outside the gate; entry is about ¥16. Two monkeys are tethered on the left as you go in, and there are deer and sheep in the courtyard, all with a record of biting. Keep your distance and your hands to yourself.

The Jiagulong mani pile

Five minutes further on. A stack of carved stones ringed by huge prayer wheels, with people walking round it clockwise — clockwise, always. The nunnery beside it, Jiagulong 甲谷弄觉姆寺 ⧉, is the only one in the Tagong area that takes women, and its spread of red roofs has earned it the nickname “little Sêrtar”. Foreigners essentially cannot get into the real Sêrtar (Larung Gar); this is the place you can actually walk into, see and photograph. The full write-up of the nunnery and the “little Sêrtar” name is on the loop page.

Roasting barley and churning tea, in a monk's house

After the mani pile we went back into Tagong town and made tsampa — roasted barley flour — and churned a pot of butter tea, in the house of one of the monks of Tagong Monastery. His mother, a local woman, laid the barley, the butter, the tea and the tools out for us and took us through it by hand: roasting, grinding, squeezing, churning. We were there about an hour. It isn't a tourist demonstration. It's somebody's kitchen, and you work through the routine they do every morning; at the end you drink the tea you just churned.

What follows is the general process — how tsampa and butter tea are made anywhere in the Tibetan world, not a description of that particular kitchen.

• What tsampa is. Roasted barley, ground to flour. It's the everyday staple of the plateau. It's like a coarse roasted meal, except the order is reversed: where a Western roasted grain is ground and then cooked, tsampa is roasted first, ground after, and never hulled.
• Step one — roast. The barley is soaked, drained, and tossed in a hot iron pan with sand in it. This is the part that takes skill: the grains hit the hot sand and split open, showing a white flower, and that's where the smell comes from.
• Step two — grind. Once cool, the barley goes through a mill, water-driven or hand-turned. What comes out is tsampa.
• How you eat it. The usual way is mapa: butter and tsampa in a bowl, boiling tea poured over, then dried cheese curd and sugar, and you mix and squeeze it with your hand until it holds together as a ball. It takes a bit of force and a bit of patience — the first one rarely works, the second does.
• Butter tea. Brew brick tea down to a strong liquor. Pour it into the churn — dongmo in Tibetan — with butter and a little salt. Then work the plunger, jialuo, up and down dozens to a hundred times to emulsify the fat and the water, and heat it through. The churning is the whole thing: skip it and the tea arrives with a slick of oil floating on top.
• And the butter itself is churned the same way: warm milk into a big wooden xuedong, worked several hundred times until the fat separates, then scooped off into a skin and left to set.
• One bit of manners worth knowing. Butter tea is poured to be drunk topped up as you go. Your host will keep refilling it, so don't drain the cup. If you've had enough, leave it standing untouched. If you're halfway through and can't finish, leave the refill where it is and drink it off in one at the end, before you go.

Where you sleep: Tagong, about 3,700 m

Tagong — Dejiling Manor 德杰岭庄园 ⧉ — a Tibetan owner, two of whose three sons are monks at Tagong Monastery. They take foreign guests. Breakfast is proper Tibetan: yak yoghurt, butter tea, barley cakes, local apples, potato-stuffed buns, eggs.

Photo note: Tagong is famous for one thing, and it's the last hour of light on the grassland — don't spend it at the table. This is the first night of the trip above 3,700 m.

Day 3 — Tagong to Ganzi: an old Gelug monastery, a lake, a 37-metre stupa

We left at about 8:00. The whole day runs north on national road G317: Tagong → Daofu → Luhuo → Ganzi. We deliberately stopped twice, so that the day wouldn't turn into nothing but driving.

Luhuo: Shouling Monastery

Shouling Monastery 寿灵寺 ⧉ sits halfway up the hillside on the north bank of the Xianshui river at Luhuo, in the Gelug tradition, and is one of the “thirteen monasteries of Hor”.

• Founded in 1650, under the name Jidan Raodeng Langjiling, later Hor Zhanggu Monastery, and finally Shouling — the name carrying a wish for long life and safety.
• It has moved, more than once: three relocations, all after earthquakes. The 1973 earthquake wrecked it and it moved about two kilometres north of town; rebuilding began in 1983 and finished in September 1988. So both things are true — the building is new, the lineage is not.
• The main hall holds a silver Shakyamuni roughly three metres high, and a covered kora corridor climbs from the foot of the hill to the middle of it. You can drive up the kora road and park at the top, which looks out over the whole of Luhuo town — where the Daqu, Niqu and Xianshui rivers come together.
• Two warnings. There are reports that the gate is locked around midday, so don't make it the thing you must see at lunchtime. And if a local says the name differently, it's the same monastery across the river from town.

Kasa Lake, on the way out of Luhuo

Continuing west towards Ganzi you pass Kasa Lake 卡萨湖 ⧉ — about 30 km west of Luhuo town, at roughly 3,510 m. A freshwater lake the size of a village pond, holy to the people here, and one of the places in Sichuan with the most mandarin ducks. It isn't large. It is extremely clear, and it's at its best in spring and summer when the grass and flowers come up around the shore.

The story they tell about it. The most widespread version goes like this. Long ago this was a dry ravine with no water; the villagers had to carry it in from outside the valley, and the harvests were thin. An old man among them prayed devoutly, and on the 108th night he dreamed of a figure in white on a white horse, who told him one thing over and over: don't forget to set the frog in the ravine free. He woke and went looking, and where the frog should have been there was only a boulder shaped like one. He pushed it, the stone moved, and water came up from underneath and rose year by year into the lake. Since then people here call it the mother lake: they walk round it to pray for rain at the start of the planting, and carry a newborn round it at one month old. A second version says the lake is a tear of a heavenly maiden who fell in love with a shepherd and was called back up.

A note that isn't for the page: there is a stone-cist burial ground on the south shore (about 335 tombs, tentatively dated to the Spring and Autumn period), and some sources say the Long March passed this way. Neither is something you saw, so neither goes into the text.

Ganzi: the White Stupa Park

In Ganzi town we went to the White Stupa Park, also called the Sêxidi Nacang Monastery 白塔公园 ⧉ — the family temple of the Nacang incarnations, and described as the largest mandala in western Sichuan.

• The centrepiece is a great stupa about 37 m high. Its three-tiered base is built to the proportions of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests in Beijing; 512 brass prayer wheels and a number of stone reliefs are set around those tiers.
• The stupa is white, round above and square below, with 119 small stupas around it forming a forest of towers. The first tier carries 176 carvings of protected animals.
• There are four large halls on the four sides, mostly Chinese in style — which is what makes it different from every other monastery on this road.
• The view is the point: the wide Yalong valley below, and to the north-west the whole of Ganzi town with Ganzi Monastery on the hillside above it.
• On entry: published information says it's open all day and free. Write that it's usually free, and note that it can change.

Where you sleep: Ganzi, hot springs

Ganzi — Luobulin Hot Spring Hotel 罗布林温泉酒店 ⧉, out by the Gesar King City. Separate little cabins, and the hot water is natural, drawn up from underground daily — you can soak in the evening. Breakfast is 8:00–9:00 and comes to the room, Chinese or Western, your choice: an unusually well-looked-after morning for this altitude. The King City area is lively at night, with performances; if you want quiet by day and a crowd by night, this is the stop.

Photo note: the stupa for the slanting evening light and again for the floodlighting — there's a viewing platform at the south-west corner for the full sweep.

Day 4 — Ganzi to Dêgê: skip this monastery, charge the car, climb to Kathok

Ganzi Monastery — you can skip this one

In the morning we went up to Ganzi Monastery 甘孜寺 ⧉, on the hillside above town — you can see it north-west from the stupa park. It isn't old and it isn't large, and Kathok is in the afternoon: a twelfth-century Nyingma seat at about 4,800 m, the mother monastery of the tradition. Set the two side by side and Ganzi Monastery isn't worth carving out time for. So: if the day is tight, this is the stop you skip. If you have time to spare, it costs you nothing to look in — just don't let it eat Kathok. It's a working parish monastery for the people of the town, so I'm not going to call it a bad one; I'm telling you where I'd spend the hours.

Manigango: lunch, and a full charge

North of Ganzi on G317 you come to Manigango 马尼干戈 ⧉ — the name means “place of the prayer wheels”, a small but important town on the northern Sichuan–Tibet road, and a stop on the old tea-and-horse route. You see people in the street with hand-held prayer wheels.

We stopped here for two things: lunch, and a full charge for the car — we were driving an electric vehicle, the climb to Kathok is long and thirsty, and I didn't want to run out. Charged up, we set off again at about 1:00 in the afternoon.

Kathok Monastery

From Manigango, take provincial road S458 up to Kathok Monastery 噶陀寺 ⧉.

• Kathok is one of the most important seats of the Nyingma tradition — founded in the twelfth century, more than eight hundred years old, and called the “second Vajra throne”. It sits at about 4,800 m. By the standards of this route it is remote, and every metre of it is worth it. To see the main hall you have to drive the mountain road all the way to the top; the images inside are the largest on the whole trip.
• There is a vegetarian restaurant at the monastery. Eat there: soup with noodles and strips of dough, plain, filling, and full of flavour — the one dish I'd order again.
• Beside it is the Shiming Buddhist college, the only one. Shiming means the five greater and five lesser sciences — the greater being language, logic, medicine, craft and inner knowledge; the lesser being rhetoric, poetics, prosody, drama and astrology. A five-sciences college normally takes six years to finish; here it takes thirteen — ten of study and debate, three of retreat.
• The last thing worth knowing about Kathok is how few people come. It is far enough out that most travellers have never heard of it; on the way up, almost everyone we met was a Tibetan who had chartered a car from Lhasa to make the pilgrimage.

A word about the S458: narrow, steep, with the drop on one side. The compensation is the scenery — the road leads to Kathok and passes Yulong Latso (marked on most maps as Xinluhai, the ice-scoured lake at about 4,040 m under the Chola pass). Don't drive it in the dark or in bad weather.

Where you sleep: Dêgê

A small, narrow county town with few options — pick somewhere clean and tidy and don't expect much character (the same as on the fourteen-day route).

Photo note: Kathok is built up the hillside, so a long lens is what gives you the layers; and at 4,800 m the spare batteries go flat fast — keep them in an inside pocket.

Day 5 — Dêgê to Yushu: the printing house, then the road down the Jinsha

Morning: the Dêgê printing house

The Dêgê Printing House 德格印经院 ⧉ is one of the three great printing houses of the Tibetan world, founded in 1729, and it still prints the old way, in front of you: a sheet, a block, a press. It holds about 300,000 hand-cut blocks, including the most authoritative editions of the Kangyur and the Tengyur. The detail I like most is that it keeps the scriptures of five traditions — Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya and Gelug, plus Bön — one more than the usual four. Entry is about ¥50; allow two hours.

Afternoon: the southern line — not Sershul, but Luoxu

Leaving Dêgê for Yushu, this is the most particular stretch of the route:

• The Dengxialongrizhu palace ruins, at Jupu village near Luoxu. We pass the ruins of Dengxialongrizhu — the home of Dengma, foremost of the thirty generals of King Gesar. Luoxu and the country around it is the old kingdom of Dengke, and the setting of the epic Dengma's Barley Kingdom; the remains of the Xialongrezhu fortress here are identified as Dengma's own castle. Around it are an old watchtower, a juniper-burning platform, a boulder known as the giant archery target, and the cave where Dengma practised long-life rituals.
• Dengma wetland. Further down is Dengma wetland 邓玛湿地 ⧉ — a high, cold plateau marsh on the upper Jinsha at about 3,600 m, and a national 4A site. Big landforms, a wide river valley, water so clear you can see the bottom, and ten thousand mu of wild sea buckthorn; in autumn the buckthorn is heavy with gold fruit and it's the best photographic stretch of the road. Inside the wetland is Zhimala Palace, said to have been built by Princess Wencheng in 641 and an important relic of the Tang–Tubo road; and the Dengma memorial hall, built for the general himself.
• Gyegu Monastery, on the hill before you enter Yushu. Instead of driving straight into town we went up first — Gyegu Monastery 结古寺 ⧉ sits on Gyegu hill above Jyekundo, the most substantial Sakya monastery in the Yushu area. The Sakya order is easy to recognise by its black, white and red stripes — Manjushri, Avalokiteshvara and Vajrapani — which is why it's also known as the “flower” teaching. In 1937 the Ninth Panchen Lama died here on his way back to Tibet, which made the monastery known across the country. From the hill you look down on the whole of Jyekundo — the best one-view summary before you drop into the city.

We reached Yushu at about 6:00 in the evening. After a week of villages and monasteries, shops, traffic and a phone signal all come back at once, and it's faintly disorienting.

Where you sleep: Yushu

Yushu — Ji Hotel 全季酒店 ⧉, Gyegu Avenue. A chain hotel — clean, quiet, laundry, and rooms with piped oxygen. After five days on the plateau, this is the night you sleep heaviest.

Photo note: the afternoon light in the Jinsha valley is the softest of the day — shoot the wetland and the buckthorn with the light behind you. And the view over the whole of Yushu is from Gyegu hill, best in the hour before sunset.

What I'd do differently

Two things people get wrong here

When to shoot

• Dawn — the kora paths and monasteries at Tagong; the white stupa at Ganzi.
• Morning to noon — driving and changing places. On this route that's what these hours are for, and there are a lot of them.
• Afternoon — the Jinsha valley, Dengma wetland, the sea buckthorn; the printing house indoors.
• The last hour — the stupa at Ganzi in slanting light, the grassland, the river valley.
• After dark — the lights of the King City at Ganzi, the floodlit stupa; and on the plateau, go outside and look up.

If you're coming to shoot

• Wide for the grassland, long for the monasteries on the slopes. Kathok is built up the hillside; only a long lens gets the layers.
• Spare batteries in an inside pocket. 4,800 m empties them quickly.
• Ask before photographing people, and don't shoot the images indoors. That holds everywhere on this route.
• Same line as everywhere else on this site: what I offer is knowing where to stand and how to get the shot — not shooting it for you.

If you only have four days

Cut the front, not the middle. Fly or drive straight to Danba on the first morning and give the spare day to Ganzi — the stupa at dusk, the King City at night, the hot spring in the morning. Keep the whole Tagong day.

Or, if you want it looser, split Day 4 in two: Ganzi → (Manigango / Kathok) sleep in Baiyu or Dêgê → the Dêgê printing house → Yushu. The Kathok day is the heaviest of the route on its own.

Questions people ask before they go

Honest notes

Every road in this piece is one I've driven myself. Conditions change: a monastery changes its hours, a road is rebuilt, a hotel stops bringing breakfast to the room, a new entry fee appears. If you get there and something is different, tell me and I'll correct the page.

Where I've named a hotel or a monastery, it's somewhere I've stayed or been — not a paid listing. Prices are what was charged on the day, and they move.

On “you can skip Ganzi Monastery” — that's my judgement: it is neither old nor large, and Kathok is behind it. If you have time, it costs you nothing to look in; just don't let it crowd out Kathok.

If you're working out how this route fits your dates, and what the light is doing in the month you're thinking about, that's worth asking before you commit — write to me.