Envision yourself cruising the famous Yangtze River, flowing with it across the centuries, through breathtaking gorges, this exciting 3-night Yangtze River Cruise offers spectacular sites and scenery. Your trip highlights include: Chongqing, Fengdu, Shennong Stream or Lesser Three Gorges, Three Gorges Dam, and Yichang.

The cruise is available 7 days a week from early February to early November, we listed the scheduled cruise options at the end of this page. Please book your own flights to Chongqing, or email us for quotation.

DAY 1: ARRIVE CHONGQING
Fly to Chongqing, you can choose to book an airport transfer with us, or proceed to cruise pier own your own (boarding instructions will be provided for on your own transfers). Most passengers usually board after dinner. The boat will depart Chongqing at around 9:00 PM or early next morning.

DAY 2: FENGDU EXCURSION
Cruise by small towns whose existence is tied to the waters of the Yangtze. First stop is the town of Fengdu Ghost City. For this shore excursion, you'll climb the many stairs to the Temple of the Emperor of Hell. This area is filled with temples and garish statues of demons and devils. In classic Chinese superstitious style, many myths and stories are connected to the ghosts, and your guide will describe how it's become a testing ground for whether souls are sent to heaven or hell. An interesting part of this shore excursion is comparing the partly-submerged rubble of the old town of Fengdu with the shiny new housing across the water, where the Fengdu inhabitants were re-housed. Join the captain in the evening for welcome drinks and dinner. (B,L,D)

DAY 3: SHENNONG STREAM EXCURSION or LESSER THREE GORGES
Rise early this morning and be on deck as you sail through the towering cliffs and mountains of the gorges Qutang and Wu Gorge.

The Lesser Three Gorges, together with its competitor port Shennong Stream, are the 2 most exciting and famous stops in the Yangtze Three Gorges. They are often called the "highlight" of the cruise, or even the whole China trip. So you will always see one of them.

When your cruise ship gets to the county seat of Wushan wedged between Qutang Gorge and Wu Gorge, you may get off there and take a side trip upstream on the Daning River, the chief tributary of the Yangtze River in the Three Gorges area, and explore the Lesser Three Gorges. The Daning River is 300 kilometer long. The 50 kilometer long stretch from Dragon Gate Gorge in the south to Tujiaba in the north is even narrower that the narrowest part of the Three Gorges. Plank road, old coffins of the ancient Ba ethnic group, monkeys and birds in the bushes feature this part of the river.

Shennong Stream is an area of the Yangtze that has changed considerably since the water level has risen. On the motorized boat ride up the tributary, the scenery changes into a narrow gorge, passing hanging coffins and local hillside villages. Where the gorge widens slightly, you transfer into smaller boats pulled by teams of "trackers" who wade thigh-deep through the water. Trackers were once the main method of pulling boats along parts of the Yangtze River. After tracking upstream, the boats are released to cruise back down with the current before joining the ferries again back to the cruise ship. Later, enter Xiling Gorge (B,L,D)

DAY 4: THREE GORGES DAM PROJECT
Visit the site of the enormous Three Gorges Dam Project. At any given time, up to 30,000 laborers are involved in the dam's construction. This project is China's biggest hydraulic engineering project, located in the middle section of Xiling Gorge. Its completion in 2009 will flood 20 towns and involve the relocation of 1.3 million people. The project includes the main dam, flood discharge gates, sand discharge gate, 5-level ship lock and a single-level ship elevator. Visiting the project site gives you the chance to see the dam from different perspectives. The outdoor platform is set high enough to get good overall views of this enormous project, and an indoor area contains a scale model of the entire dam site. Return to the boat after the excursion and journey one and a half hours to Yichang. Disembark here (B, L)

This tour is available 7 days a week, the cruise ships are: