Wonders of Yunnan
Born from a Love for Our Homeland and Its Living Traditions. Guided by Local Knowledge and Genuine Care.
Chosen by 20.000+ travelers worldwide for journeys through China.
Thinking about traveling to China?
Start with Yunnan!
Yunnan is where China opens up gently. Twenty-six of the country’s ethnic minorities call this province home, and the landscape changes with them. Rice terraces stepping down hillsides in the south, tropical borderlands near Laos and Myanmar, snow peaks rising above Lijiang and Shangri-La in the northwest. You can cross several of those in one journey without ever feeling rushed.
It’s a different arrival from Beijing or Shanghai. The cities are smaller, the pace is slower, and daily life stays visible in a way it often isn’t elsewhere: the morning markets, the slow handmade crafts, festivals that happen because they have for centuries and not because visitors are watching.
Getting to that from the outside is the hard part. Signage and menus are rarely in English beyond the main hotels. Train bookings and bus timetables assume you already know how the system works. And it’s genuinely difficult to judge, from a distance, which experiences are real and which have been arranged for tour groups.
That’s our part. Are you ready to explore with us?
Since
1981
25.000+
Travelers
100%
Customizable Tours
5000+
Tours
70+
Employees
Satisfaction over
99.8%
The People Behind Your Journey
-
Linda Lin
-
Sam Jin
-
Vera van de Nieuwenhof
-
Kaylee Ke
-
Zoie Li
-
Jack Mcgilvray
-
Ben Pisacane
-
Katherine
-
Joanna Gu
-
Sofia Tang
-
Lucy Lei
-
Stella Chen
-
Helen Chen
-
Yuli Li
-
Amanda
-
Zhang Jing
Our Story
2011
Founded in Kunming
2013
First Western
Travelers
2016
Recommended by
Lonely Planet
2020
TripAdvisor Travellers Choice Award
2020
Joined the Wonders of Yunnan family:
Tibet Faces & Amazing Guizhou
2025
TripAdvisor Travellers Choice Award
2026
25.000 Travelers,
Countless Memories
Wonders of Yunnan is a Kunming-based tour operator building tailor-made journeys for individuals and small groups. We're the international travel brand of KSCI Travel Co. Ltd., which has worked in China's travel industry since 1981 — so behind every trip sits decades of operational experience, local relationships, and knowledge of how this country actually moves.
Our team is a mix of Chinese and international staff. That combination is deliberate: local knowledge on one side, a clear sense of what international travellers need to feel confident and comfortable on the other.
How we work
Trusted since 1981
Decades in Yunnan, and a top-ranking TripAdvisor listing to match.
Verified reviews from thousands of travellers who've journeyed with us.
Deep local knowledge
We only work with local English-speaking minority tourguides.
They will share their deep cultural knowledge with you - from finding the best noodle stall to ethnic customs and local history.
We get you
Western travel habits are perfectly understood.
Dietary needs, hotel comfort, and payment quirks: all sorted before you land.
Moments you'll remember
Sunrise rice terraces, craft workshops, time with local hosts.
Woven into the route, never sold as extras.
Competitive pricing
Our local network means direct rates, not reseller markups.
Better quality for the price, because we negotiate it ourselves.
We give back
Family-run guesthouses, small businesses, local minority tour guides, low-impact travel.
Your trip supports the communities you are visiting.
Mission & Vision
Linda founded Wonders of Yunnan in 2011, after a decade living in the Netherlands. What she noticed there was how often China was described by people who had never been: shaped by assumption rather than experience.
That's still the reason we do this. Our journeys are built to replace assumptions with encounters: learning Naxi paper-making from someone whose family has done it for generations, sharing a meal in a home rather than a restaurant, arriving in a village while a celebration is underway. Small, human moments that explain Yunnan better than words ever can.
What travellers say
We've been recognised by Lonely Planet, Le Guide du Routard, and TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice. More recently, CGTN followed one of our journeys: filming daily life, cultural activities, and travellers making connections along the way, rather than staged sightseeing.
The most useful thing you can read isn't written by us. If you're unsure what to expect, check out the independent reviews left by travellers on TripAdvisor.
What we're working towards
We want you to see the real China. See its landscapes, its cultures, and the people who live in them, and to come home having understood something you couldn't have got from a guidebook. Smoothly, comfortably, and without leaving damage behind.
Sustainability
Responsible travel isn't a separate product line for us. We stay with family-run guesthouses, work with local guides and small businesses, and favour walking, cycling, and lower-impact ways of getting around wherever they fit the journey. It keeps trips comfortable and means they leave something behind in the places they pass through.
We generally discourage the use of oxygen bottles at high altitude, unless necessary, to avoid creating unnecesarry waste in a fragile environment. Our guides are experts at letting you adjust gradually and comfortably to altitude, in the ways of their ancestors.
Supporting Local Communities
Our journeys are built around local knowledge and collaboration. We partner with local guides, businesses and families to ensure tourism directly supports the people who Yunnan home.
In addition, we support local initiaves that give back to the community. One example is the Have a Heart initiave: providing vital heart surgery for children in rural communities.
Thoughtful Travel
We encourage a slower, more mindful way of exploring. By focusing on meaningful experiences over mass tourism, we create journeys that ar not only memorable, but also responsible and sustainable.
