Chengdu & Chongqing Highlights

Your private driver meets you at Chengdu Tianfu International Airport. After settling into your hotel, explore Jinli Ancient Street — one of the oldest commercial streets in western China, with over 1,800 years of history. Sichuan street food, shadow puppets, and red lanterns. Welcome dinner at a local restaurant.

Arrive at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Pandas by 8am, before the crowds. Watch pandas eat breakfast, play, and nap — babies in the nursery, adults lounging on platforms. After lunch, head to the Sichuan Cuisine Museum for a hands-on hot pot cooking class. Learn to make the famous Sichuan chili oil and understand why this cuisine has UNESCO recognition.

Visit Wuhou Temple, the memorial to Zhuge Liang — the legendary strategist of the Three Kingdoms era. The temple garden is an oasis of bamboo groves and bonsai. Afternoon at a traditional Chengdu teahouse — sit in bamboo chairs, watch locals play mahjong, and learn to brew gaiwan tea. The art of doing nothing, perfected over 2,000 years.

Take the bullet train to Chongqing — the mountain city where skyscrapers grow out of cliffsides. Visit the famous Li Ziba viewpoint where the monorail passes through a 19-story apartment building (yes, really). Dinner at a local Chongqing hot pot restaurant — this city claims to have invented it. End at Hongyadong: an 11-story cliffside village lit up like a fantasy film set reflected in the Yangtze River.

Morning at Ciqikou Ancient Town — a 1,000-year-old riverside settlement clinging to a hillside, now famous for its tea houses and street snacks. Walk through Jiefangbei, Chongqing's Times Square. Private transfer to Chongqing Jiangbei Airport or train station for your next destination.