Empire & Horizon – A Romantic Journey through China & Mongolia

Tour Highlights

• China then Mongolia on one 18-day run: Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Zhengzhou, Xi'an and Beijing, then Ulaanbaatar, Terelj, the Mini Gobi and Kharkhorin
• Shanghai's History Museum, which traces how a riverside fishing village turned into a global financial city
• Pudong's skyline seen from the Bund, across the Huangpu River
• Yu Garden, laid out over four centuries ago, plus the old town lanes and Xintiandi
• Hangzhou's West Lake seen from the water, a UNESCO World Heritage site
• Longjing tea tasted at source, in Meijiawu Tea Village above Hangzhou
• Suzhou's Lingering Garden, a classical Ming-era garden on the UNESCO list
• A cruise on the Grand Canal, the oldest canal in China

Itinerary at a Glance

1. Day 1: Australia / New Zealand to Shanghai — Flying day: leave from Australia or from New Zealand and land in Shanghai, where someone from the tour meets you at the airport and takes you to your hotel, and the day is then yours.
2. Day 2: Shanghai: museum, garden and old town lanes — Yu Garden has been planted on the same spot for over four centuries, and it is the calmest half-hour you will spend in Shanghai: ponds, rockeries and pavilions folded into one walled block. Outside it
3. Day 3: Shanghai to Hangzhou: the Bund, then tea country — Shanghai shows you its two faces before you leave: the old banking houses along the Bund on one side of the Huangpu, the towers of Pudong on the other. Then it is south to Hangzhou, the city Chinese t
4. Day 4: Hangzhou to Suzhou: gardens, silk and the Grand Canal — Suzhou has organised itself around water since 514 BC, and the old lanes, stone bridges and canals still follow that plan; the comparison with Venice is a fair one. Its showpiece is the Lingering Gard
5. Day 5: Suzhou to Zhengzhou by bullet train — The Henan Museum is the reason this stop is on the map: a pyramid-shaped building holding finds from the province many Chinese regard as their civilisation's birthplace. Ritual bronzes from the Shang
6. Day 6: Zhengzhou to Shaolin Temple and back — Monks still train at Shaolin, and the martial arts centre here puts on a kung fu demonstration that may be the memory you keep from the day. The temple stands in wooded hills south of Zhengzhou, at th
7. Day 7: Zhengzhou to Xi'an: the Terracotta Army — The pits near Xi'an hold an army in clay: thousands of life-size figures, with horses and chariots drawn up in formation. It is the detail that stays with people. No two faces match, and the hair, the
8. Day 8: Xi'an to Beijing, with a stop at Tongrentang — Tongrentang has been dispensing herbs in Beijing for over three centuries, and a visit here is part pharmacy, part clinic: you hear how Chinese medicine reads the body as a set of balances, and how ac
9. Day 9: The Great Wall at Juyong Pass, a jade workshop and hutong lanes — Juyong Pass is the section you walk today, and it is a good one: fewer coaches than the busiest stretches, ramparts following the ridge line as far as you can see, and steep steps right at the start.
10. Day 10: Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, or the Temple of Heaven — The Forbidden City, known in China as the Palace Museum, went up in the early 1400s and stayed the seat of imperial power until the last dynasty fell. Fires, invasions and rebuilding have all left the
11. Day 11: Beijing to Ulaanbaatar: into Mongolia — You land in Ulaanbaatar with the afternoon free, which gives you three museums to choose from in the centre: the Choijin Lama Temple, a natural history collection known for its dinosaur skeletons, and
12. Day 12: The Genghis Khan statue and Terelj National Park — Dress-ups are part of the fun at the Genghis Khan statue complex: you can put on a warrior's or a queen's costume before you climb to the plinth of a 40-metre figure. From there you carry on into Tere
13. Day 13: Ulaanbaatar: Zaisan Hill, Gandan Monastery and Sukhbaatar Square — Ulaanbaatar runs along a valley, and Zaisan Memorial Hill is the place to take it in: the city below, the suburbs behind, then open country. You come down into the traffic for Gandan Monastery, where
14. Day 14: Mongol Nomadic Show and the Mini Gobi Desert — Camels first: at Elsen Tasarkhai, also called the Mini Gobi, dunes rise out of the grassland and you ride a Bactrian, the two-humped kind, across the sand. The morning's Mongol Nomadic Show sets up th
15. Day 15: Erdene Zuu Monastery and the Kharkhorum Museum — Inside Erdene Zuu's white walls you find a working Buddhist monastery: stupas in long rows, temple halls holding murals and old Buddhist art, and a calm that sits oddly beside the tourist traffic. Mon
16. Day 16: Hustai National Park, then back to Ulaanbaatar — Hustai National Park is where Przewalski horses were brought back to the wild, the only horse that was never domesticated, and the drive from Kharkhorin, roughly 390 kilometres, breaks here so you can
17. Day 17: Ulaanbaatar to Australia / New Zealand — Airport transfer, then the flight home to Australia or to New Zealand.
18. Day 18: Arrive home in Australia / New Zealand — Home again, with the cities of China and the open country of Mongolia behind you. Take the day slowly.

What's Included

• Return international flights in economy class on full-service carriers
• One flight within the trip: Beijing to Ulaanbaatar
• Three long legs on China's high-speed network, with domestic flights as the fallback if rail is unavailable
• 16 nights across 3-star and 4-star hotels and ger camps
• Courtyard by Marriott Jiading in Shanghai (4-star)
• Fubang International in Hangzhou (4-star)
• Suyuan Hotel in Suzhou (4-star)
• Aloft Hotel in Zhengzhou (3-star)
• Metropark Huanyu Hotel in Xi'an (3-star)
• Ramada Beijing North in Beijing (3-star)
• Premium Hotel Ulaanbaatar (4-star)
• Three nights in traditional ger camps
• 28 meals in all, with breakfast every day and one meal shared with a family of Mongolian herders
• Breakfast on 16 mornings
• Six lunches, one of them the Peking duck meal in Beijing
• Six dinners, among them a home-cooked meal in a Beijing hutong home and the Mongolian farewell dinner
• Air-conditioned private coaches and cars
• Three high-speed rail trips, or domestic flights where rail is unavailable
• Transfers to and from the airport