We will send you the tour guide information and pickup time by email and SMS Message. Before 8 pm that day, the tour guide will also contact you or leave a message for you at the hotel about the pickup time. 

The driver will wait for you in the hotel lobby at the agreed time.

After all group members have been collected, you will be transferred to Leshan, approximately 2 hours’ drive from Chengdu. Your group will have a maximum of 10 people.

Good to Know:

• Hotel pickup and drop-off services will be available within the 3rd ring road of Chengdu. If your hotel is outside the 3rd ring road, we can arrange an additional transfer for you, or you can go to the appointed meeting place yourself. That transportation fee will be at your own expense.
• You will have a reliable licensed local driver with at least 5 years’ driving experience, to ensure your safe travel.
• You will have a spacious and comfortable legal vehicle with A/C and unlimited bottled water. We can provide a baby seat if needed. Please specify any special requests at the time of booking.

It is about 2-hour car driving from Chengdu to Leshan. The tour guide will meet and greet all of you at Leshan Port.

On arrival in Leshan, you will head to the Giant Buddha Park and be dropped off at the boat dock.

You will take a boat ride on the river to see the Buddha from a different perspective. The whole trip will last 15-20 minutes. The boat will take you right up to the Giant Buddha. Don’t forget to take a selfie, smiling along with the Buddha.

Standing 233 feet (71 meters) tall, the Leshan Giant Buddha is carved into a cliff face over-looking the confluence of the Dadu, Qingyi, and Min Rivers. The 1,200-year-old Giant Buddha holds the record as the largest Buddha sculpture in the world. His ears stretch for 7 meters, his shoulders span 28 meters, and each of his big toes is 8.5 meters long.

Who Built This Giant Buddha and Why?

• A Buddhist monk called Haitong conceived the project in AD 713, hoping that the Buddha would calm the swift river and protect fishermen from lethal currents.The huge project wasn’t completed until 90 years after Haitong’s death, but eventually, the story goes that just as he had once wished, the river waters calmed. Locals say it was the Grand Buddha’s calming effect.

Good to Know

• Other groups, wishing to appreciate fully the Buddha’s magnitude, descend along the red sand cliff road to view the phenomenal Giant Buddha from the bottom, and climb up at the opposite side of the hill. There is always a long queue waiting to descend to the feet of the Leshan Giant Buddha.
• Traffic on the staircase can come to a complete standstill for about 2-3 hours at weekends or on public holidays, especially during summer vacations. To save your precious time, we do a river cruise for a panoramic view of the Buddha, rather than trying to get a close-up look.

After visiting Buddha, there will be 40 mins drive to a laid-back old town. Take a walk around the town where traditional lifestyles still survived from the modernization. Along the way we visit traditional workshops such as blacksmith’s shop, bamboo workshop, barber shop etc. Enjoy tea and chat and share stories with lovely local people in old tea house and later drop in one of the hundred-year-old courtyard house where it’s owner are so proud of and love to share stories of the house.

A short drive takes us up to the mountain. The tea farmer will take us to the tea field, where we will learn a lot about tea from how to pick-up the best tea sprouts or tea buds, to weather conditions and different regions for Tea. Have a try of picking tea from the tea trees!

Afterward visiting the tea business family to reveal the process of making all kinds of tea, let’s sit down in front of the farm house and enjoy tea – more stories sharing and learning of tea, as in of wine there are Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir in tea as well!

Going back to your hotel in Chengdu will normally take about 2 hours. We will transfer you there at the end of the tour.

If you need to catch a flight or a train after the tour we will be more than happy to help you arrange it. We suggest you take flights departing after 10 pm or trains departing after 9:30 pm. Please click here to book the airport transfer for your onward flight.