4 Days Kanas Hemu Village Best Hiking Tour
Superb Landscape & Enjoyable Hiking for All
Superb Landscape & Enjoyable Hiking for All
Kanas boasts as one of the most beautiful places in China, which is absolutely right. Among the many magnificent experiences to explore this wonderland, such as photography, rafting, rock climbing, boating, horse riding, etc., hiking is the most recommended. It is the best way to enjoy the untouched natural beauty like a part of it. Kanas provides hiking on well-paved trails and primitive trails. You can experience both two hiking experiences in a single trip. The well-paved trails take you to the most beautiful river bays and the vast Kanas Lake, while the primitive trails take you to the off-the-beaten-track mountain area near Hemu Village. They both are not difficult-level hikes, and can be enjoyed by all kinds of travelers even kids and seniors.
Our 4 Days Kanas Hiking Tour ensures you have at least two full days hiking to the most beautiful area of Kanas, also some flexible time to explore things of your own interest. You will be accompanied by a local guide who knows the area very well so that you won’t miss out all the best experiences. Comfortable hotels, airport pick up and drop off, attraction tickets, sightseeing bus and breakfasts are all covered. The hiking itinerary can be tailor-made according to your interest and energy condition.
Kanas can be visited all year around but only the months between April~October are suitable for hiking. The temperature gap between day and night is very big. You should pack both hiking clothes and extra layers.
Day 1 Kanas Airport Arrival - Hemu Village (L)
Kanas airport pick up & drive to Hemu Village
Welcome to Kanas, the most beautiful place in Xinjiang. Upon arriving at Burqin Kanas Airport, you will be welcomed by local tour guide and driver, then drive about 80 km (about 2 hours) to Hemu Village where you will stay over tonight.
Hemu Village is an important part of Kanas Scenic Area. It is one of the most beautiful villages in China, a magic place where you can get rid of the hustle and bustle and immerse yourself in the creation of photography. The villagers are Tuvans who is a branch of Mongolian. The ancestors of Tuvas are believed to be solders of Genghis Khan. Currently, there are about 2000 Tuvas people living in Hemu and other two nearby villages – Baihaba and Kanas. Their houses are made of wood entirely without any steels and cements, and they still keep the old traditions of nomad living, Tibetan Buddhism, festival, etc. Small population, old-fashioned wooden house, exotic ethnic culture and wild surrounding forests all make Hemu Village a peaceful and primitive place. You will visit a local Tuvas family to find out what’s their living like, and get treated with local snacks, fruits and drinks prepared by the hosts. Sometimes, you can even a race chance to see Tuvas playing music and dancing. The rest is free for you to relax and exploring surrounding. Sunset here is fabulous. You can walk up to a higher hill to appreciate the sunset in the golden sunlight. The vast golden birch forests and green grasslands surround the peaceful village, together appear charming colors like an oil painting.
Kanas Arrival Idea
Kanas can be arrived by flight and driving. Currently Urumqi has the most frequent daily flights to Burqin Kanas Airport. Turpan, Yili, Boyue and several other Xinjiang cities also operate some weekly flights to Kanas. Travel to Kanas by land driving from Urumqi takes about 9 hours.
Beautiful Hemu River in September
Day 2 Hemu Hiking (B)
Today's highlights: Hemu Village Sunrise, Hiking to Beautiful Peak
Get up early to catch the incredible sunrise which is also the MUST photo to be shot. When the sun rises and shines onto the mist curling up the villages, it is the moment to take one of the best pictures in your life. To shoot the sunrise, you need to walk along the plank road to the high places on the mountains near to the village. After the sunrise, go back to your hotel to have breakfast.
Today, you will enjoy a comfortable hiking around Hemu Village to the Beautiful Peak (Meilifeng). The hike is about 20km without many ups and downs, and needs about 5~6 hours, which can be done by all ranges of people, including kids and seniors. Some travelers prefer riding a horse to the Beautiful Peak, but hiking is the most recommended as it is full of off-the-beaten-track experiences. Compared with the paved plank trails in Kanas Lake Scenic Area, the road to the Beautiful Peak is more primitive, taking the dirt tracks through birches, meadows and hills. There are barely human activities until you get to the small Kazak village under the foot of the Beautiful Peak. Enjoy the god-given peaceful moments in the village where there is no noisy of tourist at all, also indulge yourself in the open landscape around you - snow-capped Beautiful Peak, open grassland, colorful forest, lovely herds… then you will hike the same direction back to Hemu Village.
After getting to Hemu Village, hop on a park bus (about 2 hours’ drive along the beautiful mountain road) to Kanas Lake Scenic Area for accommodation.
Notice: there is no restaurant and shop along the hiking. You can bring some snacks for lunch.
Day 3 Kanas Lake Scenic Area Hiking (B, L)
Today's highlights: Recumbent Dragon Bay, Moon Bay and Celestial Bay, Taiga Trail, Fish-watching Tower, panoramic view of Kanas Lake
Today is a full-day exploration of Kanas Lake Scenic Area including two enjoyable hiking experiences: Three Bays Hiking and Kanas Hiking.
Get up early to escape the crowds, then take a park bus to the Three Bays area. Start hiking from the Recumbent Dragon Bay and walk along the plank road along the Kanas River to Moon Bay and Celestial Bay, which is about 6km long, very leisure and beautiful. This section is the most beautiful part of the entire Kanas Scenic Area. The water here is crystalline, gentle and lovely. Along the two sides of the three bays are forests with alternate colors of green, yellow and golden, changing with the seasons. The trees, sky and clouds together project in the river, and appear a colorful reflection.
Then take a park bus from the Celestial Bay to the lakeside of Kanas Lake. There is a 5-kilometer-long plank road, known as Taiga Trail, following the eastern lake shore of Kanas to the deep wild forest. It is a scenic and relaxing experience as well as a good way to escape from the tourist crowds. You will walk through Siberian spruce forest, Wall of Root Carving, Taiga moors and reach at Tuluke Rock Painting at the end of the plank road, then return the same way.
Optional Kanas Lake Cruise – if you want to explore deeper area of Kanas, you can join the Cruise Program. The sightseeing ship sails to the heart area of the lake, the return to the lake shore, lasting about 45 minutes. Tell your guide if you get interested.
After the lakeside hiking, keep traveling to Fish-watching Tower - the highest location of Kanas Scenic Area. The Fish-watching Tower is located at 2056 meters on a mountain at the outlet of Kanas Lake. One needs to walk about 1000 steps up to reach the tower, but the rewarding is handsome - a panoramic view of Kanas Lake, and stretching eyesight to the snow mountains of the Friendship Peak (4374m).
Lastly, transfer by park bus back to your hotel. Have a good rest.
Day 4 Kanas Departure (B)
Kanas Burqin Airport drop off
Wake up in the peaceful morning of Kanas to have breakfast. The rest time of today is free for you to relax until your driver escorts you to catch your flight to Urumqi or other destinations.
1. This price is for one person, based on a group of 2 adults sharing one standard double-bed room in local hotels
and traveling with our private tour in low seasons.
2. This price is subject to change according your
traveling season, group size, hotel class, change of activities in your itinerary and possible fluctuation of
currency exchange rate. If you want a lower price, you can get more people to join you, or use economy class hotels.
3. This price is only valid to March 31, 2025.
4. Reference exchange rate of USD 1=RMB 7.00. The final quote is based on current exchange rate. It may change
according to the currency fluctuation, while the RMB quotation will be remained the same.
Hi Rita,
The best experience ever!!!! I fell in love.
I received your lovely card and cute gifts, thank you so much.
Done it! As always it’s my pleasure to hire your company services, see you in the next adventure.
Emmy
Hi Rita,
Please kindly see the feedback below.
We are a family of 7. This private tour package definitely met our expectations! Both tour guides (Chengdu- MAY & Chongqing-DAVID) provided us a very good service, both friendly and very flexible despite the change in our tour schedules. They were also very responsible and ensured our safety, meals and transports were well taken care of, especially since we have elderly and kids in our group. Both tour guides are very fluent in English too so it is very convenient for some of the non-chinese speakers in our group.
We will look for the same tour agent again in our next trip to China!
Best Regards,
Victoria
Hi Shirley,
Thanks for the tour, and the itinerary that you planned for us was very comprehensive and detailed. We enjoyed it very much. The tour guide was also very friendly and experienced. He followed your itinerary closely and brought us to all the sites and explained in detail. He also recommended and brought us to enjoy some of the local cuisines during lunch.
Overall, we are impressed by the excellent service, reliability and quality that yourself, the tour guide and the driver has provided us. We would like to visit China again and we will not hesitate to engage your services again. Thank you!
Regards
Chun How
Hi Shirley,
I'm writing to provide some feedback on our recent Xian and Beijing trip that you put together for us.
We travel a lot, in the past year to Japan, New Zealand, China, Turkey, Africa, China, and finally this Xian/Beijing trip. I bring this up to highlight that we deal with a lot of travel professionals. You are easily the best travel professional we have dealt with through all of those trips. My wife, who happens to be Chinese asked me to make sure to keep your contact information for future China trips, with the intention of replacing the China based agent her brother usually uses for our trips.
Please let your manager know that we would probably not have used your company if not for you. Bamboo Travel is new to us and in a foreign country, so we had doubts as to what to expect. Your service was excellent from start to finish which really gave us confidence in your company. We had a little bit of an unusual itinerary and some constraints related to our other China travel prior to this tour. You were able to work through all of our issues with fast responses to our questions.
You also went what I would say was above and beyond expectations. The final example of that is a friend in the US was shipping some things to our hotel in Beijing for me to bring home to her. I contacted you to confirm the hotel name before they shipped the items, expecting I would then have to figure out the shipping details. Your reply not only confirmed the hotel, but you provided the shipping info in both English and Chinese, which saved me the hassle of trying to figure which address to use. Not a huge thing, but it's those small things that add up to a big difference in customer experience.
Thanks again for everything!
Xian:
Our guide was Waldner and we liked him from the start. We were just coming off another tour with another company which had maybe the best tour leader we've ever had. Even though we were always comparing Waldner measured up well. He was great at explaining the history of places we visited as well as answering our cultural questions. The restaurants/food were very good. He and the driver also modified the itinerary somewhat to optimize the driving based on our arrival and departure times and locations. We liked the hotel in Xian. The car (van) was very comfortable. Waldner also helped arrange tickets for a night show for us.
Beijing:
Pickup was great; even though we got in late the guide that picked us up was there and actually met us at the track. Cindy was our guide and we really liked her also. She is very knowledgeable and willing to answer (a lot of) questions. This was my 3rd time in Beijing and it was amazing what a difference having a good guide made. Cindy and the driver also modified the itinerary to optimize the driving. She also helped us book tickets to two shows, one of which was not on your list of optional items (Lao She tea house). Cindy was concerned about us ordering a cab so she stayed at the show to make sure we got back to our hotel ok. The restaurants/food were very good. The hotel was good but not great; for example we had hot water issues every day, and when I went to pick up a package that was shipped to me they just left me to dig through a pretty large pile of packages all addressed in Chinese.
To wrap up, I would rate the overall experience of looking for a trip, picking a company, and traveling 9.5 out of 10. Shirley, your service was 10 out of 10.
See you next trip!
Terry
Dear Rita,
Feedback.
The trip organised by Rita Jiang to Beijing and Xian was very well planned and enjoyable, showing the best of Chinese history, culture, heritage, and enormous progress.Your 2 guides, Linda Chua and Beryl are very good. Linda went out of her way to take us to Peking Opera at night. The kids were tired, so we did not go to Summer palace and Heavenly temple, and did not go to Xian Pagoda. It was our choice, so its ok. (I have been to all)
The 2 bus drivers were excellent, very careful, disciplined and good temperament and helpful. I could not give a tip to Beryl at Xian station, as I had to rush into toilet inside, and did not know she could not enter the train Station.
The pace was good, but the last day of train from Xian, to hotel (plus late dinner scrabbling in Beijing), then early next morning to airport was too Hectic. However, it was because we had to return on 8.12.24. we wish we could stay longer in Xian, and elsewhere. We could probably have gone to Xian by train, then fly back to Beijing by plane, but one way tickets could cost much more.
Anyway, thank you very much for all your fine arrangements. We all enjoyed the short trip.
For the kids, the major highlights were the Great Wall, Terracotta warriors, Acrobatic show. They will treasure. I will plan more trips for them to China.
Best wishes and warm regards,
Richard
excellent assistance, helpfulness and courtesy. My contact 'was Shirley, prepared friendly and punctual. Highly recommended...
"Highest Standards of Quality and Honesty" is the core value of each specialized team at China Discovery.
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After sending us an inquiry, one of our travel consultants will get back to you within 0.5~23.5 hrs. In the next few days, he/she will be working closely with you to formulate a customized tour plan, as well as providing professional suggestions based on your travel interests, time, and budget.
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Our local guide in every destination is not only very friendly, enthusiastic but also very informative and knowledgeable.
Once you arrive in the destination, the patient and punctual guides will pick you up and take you to get under skin of the city at your own pace. By in-depth discovery and explanation, they’ll show you more about the history, culture, customs and authentic local life. Throughout the journey, they're not only expert guides who take care of all the details but also fellow travelers who are dedicated to help you explore in comfort and style.
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Our private service includes licensed drivers with many years’ driving experience and air-conditioned, non-smoking, clean and well-maintained cars/vans. Drivers are local, polite, friendly and helpful, taking you to your tourist sites, hotels, airport/train stations in safety. All kinds of vehicle are offered, and yours depends on the size of your group. Usually, we offer sedan cars, SUVs, business vans (MPV) and different types of buses, all with extra space for your luggage.
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In each destination, you’ll enjoy a comfortable stay in a great location!
The hotels we choose are based on star rating, great locations, well-equipped facilities, cozy bed, high quality service and guests’ feedbacks. Choices are a lot ranging from luxury 5 star, comfortable 4 star to budget 3 star. You could decide where to stay to best suit for your budget and likes. Generally, the hotels have both Western and Chinese breakfast with a wide choices.
If you have already got an ideal hotel, please feel free to tell our travel consultants and they'll book the hotel for you.
Have good sleep in our well-selected hotels in all the destinations of China.
We can satisfy all the dietary requirements no matter you want Chinese local food, western food, vegetarian food or muslin food.
The restaurants we will take you for lunch or dinner are all designated tourist restaurants approved by local tourist administration bureau. They have very good sanitary conditions and the food is prepared fresh and clean.
There will be some meals excluded in your itinerary as you like, and your private guide will be delighted to give you some suggestions and take you to the local restaurants to taste like Beijing Roast Duck, Xian Dumpling Dinner, Sichuan Hotpot, etc., if you are interested in local food tasting.
All the dining options will satisfy your stomach!
Beautiful Hemu River in September
Visit a local Tuvas family in Hemu Village
Morning mist in Hemu Village in Autumn
Hemu - Beautiful Peak (Meilifeng) hiking
Hemu - Beautiful Peak (Meilifeng) hiking
Peaceful Hemu Village in Winter
Winding Kanas River in July
Moon Bay (autumn) - the iconic sight of Kanas
Taiga Trail along the lake shore of Kanas Lake
Fish-watching Tower - high location to enjoy panoramic view of Kanas Lake
Xinjiang can satisfy all your desires about different styles of travel, no matter you are seeking for nature fun, culture experience or some adventures. Generally speaking, Kashgar, Turpan and Urumqi are most popular as the Golden Triangle. They provide you Silk Road history and culture as well as Xinjiang featured scenery – beautiful lakes, gorges, mountains, etc. They are the best options for the first-timers, needing about 6~8 days. Kanas, with tranquil lake and bays, primitive villages and ethnic culture, is strongly recommended too. A trip to Kanas usually takes about 4~7 days. If you prefer natural landscape, the western Xinjiang offers you superb grassland, alpine like, wild flowers. Recommended places include Sayram Lake, Karajun Grassland, Naraty Grassland, etc. The southern Xinjiang has many hidden gems for an in-depth adventure, such as historical Silk Road cities, Takilamakan Desert, Hotan, Kuqa, etc. Such a trip usually costs over 10 days, but it is definitely worth your time and effort.
Xinjiang is far away from the sea with surrounding high mountains, forming an obvious temperate continental climate. The temperature difference is large; the sunshine time is sufficient; the ultraviolet ray is strong; the air is very dry. Since Xinjiang has a vast area, the climate differs a lot by regions. Generally speaking, the southern Xinjiang is hotter than northern Xinjiang; northern Xinjiang has more rainfall than the southern area. You can easily find different places to travel in different seasons.
♦ April to June: Ili Apricot Valley, Tianshan Tianchi Lake, Sayram Lake, Tashkurgan, Naraty Grassland, Urumqi, Turpan, Kashgar, etc.
♦ July to August: Urumqi, Sayram Lake, Karajun Grassland, Naraty Grassland, Kanas, Urumqi, Turpan, Kashgar, etc.
♦ September to early November: Kanas, Taklimakan Desert, Populus Euphratica in Tarim Basin, Kuqa Grand Canyon, Tashkurgan, Naraty Grassland, Urumqi, Turpan, Kashgar, etc.
♦ Mid November to March: Urumqi, Turpan, Kashgar, Kanas, etc.
Getting there: it usually takes a longer time than other China cities to get to Xinjiang. Travelers usually arrive in Urumqi first by flight or train then transfer to other cities of Xinjiang. Currently, you can take flights to Urumqi from Beijing (about 4 hours), Xian (about 42.5 hours), Shanghai (about 5.5 hours), Guangzhou (about 5 hours), Chengdu (about 3.5 hours), etc., or high speed trains from Dunhuang (about 4.5 hours), Lanzhou (about 11 hours), Xining (about 9.5 hours), etc. Kashgar is the secondly-used arrival hub. It operates some domestic flights to Xian, Chengdu, etc.
Getting around: from Urumqi, you can keep traveling by flights to Kashgar, Kanas, Kuqa, Ili, etc. Actually, traveling by driving is more popular than taking flight and train, because the best scenery can usually be reached by car. But it's hard to travel by public bus to many remote scenic areas.So let a travel agency like China Discovery arrange transfer for you is the best choice.
Apart from a few major cities such as Urumqi, Kashgar and Turpan whose hotels have complete facilities and wifi. In many other places, especially in some remote scenic spots, accommodation is relatively simple and basic, such as Kanas, Sayram Lake, Naraty, Tashkurgan, etc. where you can stay in a guesthouse, a homestay or a local yurt. Also, during the busy season from June to October every year, hotel occupancy will be much higher than normal days, so it is necessary to book your hotel in advance.
China Discover has included accommodation in our every tour package so that you don’t have trouble with booking hotels on your own. All our hotels are well-selected, comfortable, well-equipped with friendly services.
● Remember to always follow your groups instead of heading to the heart regions by your own, or you may get lost. Cell phone signal may be weak or zero in the grassland or forest areas in Xinjiang, stay calm.
● Wear the harness correctly when enjoying horse riding and follow the direction to keep safe!
● More useful tips & packing list for desert travel in China >
Xinjiang’s Uyghur food and other local cuisine will be a memorable part of your trip. The local Uyghur food is famous throughout China and popular among travelers. There are not only Uyghur foods, but also traditional Chinese food, Hui food, Kazakh food, etc. Some hotels and restaurants in bigger cities, such as Urumqi, Kashgar, Turpan, Ili, etc., also provide western food and coffee.
We usually cover your breakfasts in your hotels and lunches during your trip. Dinner is your own chance to explore local food or other food you are interested in. Feel free to let your guide know your dinning interest and requirement in advance so that you can arrange meals accordingly.
Hemu Village - Kanas Lake Scenic Area
Urumqi - Turpan - Kashgar - Tashkurgan
Urumqi - Karamay - Wu'erhe - Kanas - Burqin - Urumqi
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