4 days / 3 nights
Tiger Leaping Gorge High Trail
The High Trail above the Yangtze, the 28 Bends, and two nights in Naxi villages under Haba Snow Mountain.
From$760per person
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Small-group trekking in China
We're China Hike — a team of hikers who have spent the past 10+ years walking China's mountains, gorges and plateaus. Now we want to walk them with you.
Where we walk
Short valley walks and long days above the tree line — market towns, monastery paths, caravan roads and pilgrim circuits, each one built around a different reason to go. Underneath them all the standard is the same: six hikers, a guide who grew up here, and a trail we have already walked ourselves.
Tell us what you're after, and we'll point you at the one that fits.
4 days / 3 nights
The High Trail above the Yangtze, the 28 Bends, and two nights in Naxi villages under Haba Snow Mountain.
6 days / 5 nights
Into the Ninong Gorge and up to a village with no road. Sacred waterfall, glacier lake, sunrise on a 6,000 m wall.
6 days / 5 nights
A high section of the pilgrim circuit around one of the most sacred peaks on the plateau. Ridgelines, pasture camps, prayer flags.
5 days / 4 nights
Rhododendron valleys, a black lake, a night at base camp and sunrise from 4,500 m.
5 days / 4 nights
A cliff-carved caravan road still in daily use, and a village with no vehicles at all.
5 days / 4 nights
Stone flagways hollowed by a thousand years of mules, and Tang-dynasty carvings in a red cliff.
Why China Hike
Most visitors see China through a window. We walk it: through gorges with no road, past villages where dinner is cooked over a fire pit, to places a coach has never reached. Every route is one our team has walked before you — in both directions, and in bad weather.
We design, guide and operate every trek ourselves. Our team has spent more than ten years on foot in the mountains, gorges and plateaus of China — and before that, on trails across the rest of the world: the Everest and Annapurna regions of Nepal, the Inca Trail in Peru, the Camino de Santiago in Spain, Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the Japan Alps and Hokkaido, the Dolomites in Italy, and at home across Yunnan, Sichuan and Tibet.
Over the years our guides have led more than 5,000 hikers — first-timers and seasoned long-distance hikers, families and solo travellers — through high passes, pilgrim circuits and village paths in all of them.
Every route we sell, we have already walked: in both directions, in bad weather, at the wrong time of year. If a day doesn't work, we change it before you ever see it on a page.
Postcard China is easy to book. We're interested in the other one: hidden gorges, ancient trade routes and mountain villages the classic itineraries never reach. Cliff-carved caravan roads still in daily use. Villages with no road at all. Pilgrim circuits that predate every border on the map.
And the walking is only half of it. A hard day means more when it ends in a family kitchen rather than a hotel lobby. So our routes are built around culture you actually step into — Naxi stone-built houses, Tibetan fire pits, Bai courtyard villages, Nu and Lisu homes where daily life was running long before you arrived and will be running long after you leave. Not a show laid on for visitors.
"We aim to bring the world into the wider, wilder, more authentic China — one small-group trek at a time."
Our eight routes run in Yunnan today, and Yunnan is where we started — not where we stop. And if none of our eight routes is quite what you had in mind — tell us. Route design is what we do; a trek built around your dates, your pace and your interests is not a special request, it's the other half of the job.
Six hikers is our hard ceiling, not our average. Two to six, always. It keeps the trail quiet, the pacing flexible, and the group small enough to sit at one table in a village home. You're welcomed like friends, not processed like tourists.
Handpicked guesthouses and village lodges, real local food, and a pace that never feels rushed. Fully English-speaking local guides who can explain the monastery, the harvest and the argument in the village square, not just point at the mountain.
Permits, transfers, luggage, altitude planning, dietary needs — handled before you land. You carry a daypack and walk. That's the whole idea.
The China worth walking to was never on a postcard — it's at the end of a trail most people never find. Tell us what you're looking for, and we'll take you there.
Who you'll walk with
Our guides live here year-round. They know which stretch turns to mud after rain, which family will take us in if the road closes, and where the tea is already hot at six in the morning.
English · Naxi · Mandarin
Grew up in a village on the Haba foothills and walked a mule road to school for nine years. He still stops to talk to the farmers he went to school with every time he walks the Tiger Leaping Gorge High Trail. On the Baoshan route he is the reason we get invited inside the stone city instead of photographing it from the far bank.
"The 28 Bends isn't hard. It's just honest — it tells you exactly how fit you are."
English · Tibetan · Mandarin
Grew up in a village below Kawagarbo and learned the kora the way other children learn the way to school — on foot, every year, with the family. His grandmother walked it until she was seventy-eight. He reads the weather on the Meili range before the forecast does, and he is the one who decides which way we turn when the sky over the glacier goes the wrong colour.
"People come for the mountain. They go home talking about the village."
English · Tibetan · Mandarin
Took the long way to the job: Nepali Himalaya first, then Chamonix, then home. He carries the rope, fixes the line over the Ice Lake pass and runs the ropework drills before every departure — a day of his season is spent making the others need him less. Walks into Yubeng in one push, in the dark, and still gets there before the mules.
"Anyone can get up there. The job is bringing everyone back down the same way."
Every route is led by a guide who has walked it before you — in both directions, and in bad weather. Questions about fitness, altitude or what happens if the weather turns? They're all answered on our Safety, insurance & FAQ page.
Two ways to get moving
Every route has fixed days, a group size and a price. If one fits, this is the fastest path — pick a date and we'll confirm it.
Most people start here.
Different dates, a different region, a different pace? Tell us what you have in mind and we'll build it — same small groups, same guides, same standard.
Pick a route and a date, or leave it blank and describe what you have in mind — same form either way. Two minutes now, and we come back with real dates and a real price.