Travel with Rita: Weekend Trip to Bipenggou Valley from Chengdu

Bipenggou Valley is located in Suoluogou, Putou Township, Li County, Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. It is a very well-known holy place for viewing red leaves in China. It can be reached within three hours’ driving from Chengdu via Dujiangyan and Wenchuan, and the whole journey is 197 kilometers.

My Photo at Bipenggou Valley and Zhuoma Lake

On the way, we firstly had a stop at Taoping Qiang Village, where is 40 kilometers from Li County, 16 kilometers from Wenchuan County, and 139 kilometers from Chengdu. Taoping Qiang Village is the world's best-preserved inhabited watchtowers and dwellings integrated into a building complex, enjoying the reputation of "natural air-conditioning". Its perfect underground water network, extending passages, and the labyrinth-like architectural art of unifying towers have been praised by scholars at home and abroad as "living fossils of Qiang architectural art" and "the ancient castle of the fascinated in the east". We bought some persimmon there. The fruit is very sweet with enough sunshine and a big temperature difference between day and night.

Visit Taoping Qiang Village

Further, we passed by Ganbao Tibet Village and had lunch there before visiting it. Ganbaozang Village is located in the center of the Tibetan and Qiang Cultural Corridor from Li County to Malkang Baili. It is 192 kilometers away from Chengdu City and 8 kilometers away from Li County. It is a typical Dazhai where Jiarong Tibetans live in concentrated communities. It was built against the mountains and the river, hence the name Ganbao, which means "village on the slope" in Tibetan.

Visit Ganbao Tibetan Village

Keep on driving, we reached Bipenggou Valley. The scenic area is distributed in a long and narrow shape, with a total length of 35 kilometers, a width of 4 kilometers, and an area of 613 square kilometers. The core scenic area of Bipenggou is 172 square kilometers, and the altitude is between 2015 and 5666 meters. The highest altitude we can reach and will visit is around 3800km. Before touring it the next day, in case of any altitude sickness, we had an early sleeping on the night. It snowed a little, in the late Autumn. So it is pretty cold in the morning, we all changed our topcoat down jacket. When the sun is rising, the snow was slowly melted.

There are two ways to get to the central scenic spots from the entrance, the first one is by hiking and the second one is by taking the shuttle bus. Since it snowed last night and we were with our 2 years daughter, and also we need to drive back to Chengdu after the tour in the afternoon, to save energy, we decided to take the shuttle bus. So we reached the scenic spots easily.

Photos at Dragon King Sea and Beautiful Red Rocks at the Bank

Road Scenery Taking from the Shuttle Bus and Parking Lot

Argali Sheep Lake is at 3676 meters. If we adults enjoyed the scenery, the kid would have enjoyed the Argali sheep at the lake bank. We didn’t see any wild yak, I guess it was because of the snow and coldness. When getting back to Chengdu, we went to Taoping Qiang Village to see the captive yaks, for my daughter loved animals very much.

Argali Sheep Lake and Argali Sheep

Yanziyanwo, which is backed by Siguniang Mountain, has the reputation of being the back of Siguniang. It is 3837 meters above sea level and the highest spot we can reach. It is a beautiful alpine meadow.

If you have more time, you can spend one or two more days to visit Siguniang Mountain together with Bipenggou Valley.