The loneliest road in China

Planning of visiting china? Here is an alternative place to visit perhaps after seeing the majestic Great Wall of China, or the busy life in Beijing and other places.

Repost from CNN
Wang Wenxin, my 61-year-old guide, slows to a halt.
The midday sun is now high in the sky and we have already been walking for five hours, sometimes following clear signs of the 1,000-year-old paved road, at other times carefully trying to trace the correct route among the trees and streams.
It's not an easy task.
Once an important supply route for caravans of mules carrying exotic goods to and from southwestern China, the ancient trail we have been following for close to a week through Yunnan’s Gaoligong Mountains has long been superseded by other roads.
Now largely abandoned and unkempt, its paving stones are long overgrown with grass or are missing completely. Trees lie strewn across the path and few markers can be seen that hint at the rich history of the road.
It has long been known as the Ambassador Road since early dignitaries used the route to cross back and forth between British-ruled Burma (now Myanmar) and China.

More donkeys than cars

While modern visions of China center on vast smoggy cities, crowded streets, jammed highways and markets crammed with fake goods, in the far reaches of the country there are still ancient roads that wind through the countryside.
Roads where visitors are far more likely to see a donkey than a scooter or businessman.

Visitors are far more likely to see a donkey than a scooter or businessman

— Kit Gillet, author of article

The Ambassador Road is one of these near-forgotten trails.
Stretching hundreds of kilometers through a UNESCO biosphere reserve in Yunnan, it passes through picturesque hamlets, towering forests and flirts dangerously with imposing rivers, all while carrying with it a life that today looks strikingly archaic compared to the chaos of China’s urban centers.
The Gaoligong mountain range is about as distant as you can get from the big city life in Beijing and Shanghai, which is precisely why I came here.
Days walking the trail are followed by nights sleeping in farmhouses and drinking rice wine in the company of hospitable farmers who have acted as innkeepers along the ancient road for centuries.
While the road dips into valleys and the occasional market town, for the most part it snakes its way over mountain passes and through barely inhabited areas of stunning landscape. 
And with only a scattering of villages and many hours of walking between each small hamlet, even today travelers are forced to rely on the kindness of strangers.

Road less traveled

Few tourists today venture this far, and I simply pick up my casual guide, Wang, at Yongping, one of the first towns on the journey. He would eventually stay with us until we had reached Tengchong, 200 kilometers to the southwest and close to the Myanmar border.

1,000 years old and a world away from modern urban China.

Even though Wang has walked the route twice before, he still has trouble picking out the correct route at points, and with only a handful of people crossing our path each day it's no easy task getting directions mid-journey. Despite mountain peaks marking most of the trail’s length, Europeans using the road in days gone by described the “rolling hills of the plateau,” “purple orchids and white dog-roses in the lanes” and “hedges of scarlet Cydania japonica broken here and there by masses of pink peach-blossom, and everywhere green leaves unfurling.”
Much of the same landscape remains, and it is still possible to indulge in some bathing in natural hot springs with local villagers, stare up at icy waterfalls, traverse rickety wooden bridges and buy fruit and vegetables at Sunday markets.
Yet the road is long forgotten by most and now serves only the few people who continue to live along its path. The larger towns in the valleys receive their goods and agricultural products from trucks along new cement roads, everything sped up in accord with the pace of modern life.
Perhaps this just makes it all the more charming for the few visitors who have the time to walk sections of this lonely road.
“I think we went the wrong way a few kilometers back,” Wang eventually says, after taking some time to determine the correct path of the Ambassador Road.
He shrugs his shoulders and leads me back down the path we had just come -- back through the endless yet stunning fields, peaks and trees.

getting there

The best way to get to the Ambassador Road is to fly to Kunming, and then take a bus to Yongping.

From Yongping, the trail winds its way down to Tengchong and beyond in the far southwest of China.