Private Panda Base & Leshan Giant Buddha Day Tour Chengdu

Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding

The panda base began in 1987 as a small rescue centre for wild pandas on a hillside north of Chengdu and is now the best-known panda breeding and research centre in the world. In recent years it has grown into a vast park of bamboo forest, lakes and open enclosures, with new areas that spread the crowds over a much larger hill.

On this private tour your guide follows a quieter route through the newer parts of the base, where the enclosures are open and green and the pandas are often seen climbing trees and feeding outdoors. You spend about two and a half hours with them, see the young pandas at play and the red pandas in their wooded areas, and stop as long as you like for photos. Is the Chengdu Panda Base worth visiting with a private guide? On a site this large it saves time and takes you straight to the most active animals.

Why we start early with the pandas

Giant pandas eat bamboo for many hours a day but are most lively in the cool first hours after opening, when keepers bring fresh bamboo and the young ones play. That is why we collect you between 7:30 and 8:00, about forty minutes' drive from the base. By late morning, especially in summer, many pandas go to sleep or move into air-conditioned rooms.

The best time to visit Chengdu Panda Base is therefore early in the day, in spring or autumn if you can choose. The Chengdu Panda Base opening hours are 7:30 to 18:00 from May to October and 8:00 to 17:30 from November to April, and some museums inside close on Mondays.

Lunch break and the drive to Leshan

After the pandas we stop for a lunch break of about fifty minutes. Lunch is not included, so you choose what you like; Sichuan cooking can be ordered less spicy, and Chengdu has many halal (qingzhen) restaurants run by Hui Muslim families, so just tell your guide if you eat halal and we stop at one.

The drive to Leshan takes about an hour and a half to two hours by expressway across the green Sichuan plain, with a rest stop if you need it. How to get to Leshan Giant Buddha on your own means a high-speed train and a taxi; on this tour your private vehicle goes door to door and waits for you at every stop.

Leshan Giant Buddha

The Leshan Giant Buddha is the tallest stone Buddha in the world, a seated Maitreya Buddha carved out of the red sandstone cliff where the Min, Dadu and Qingyi rivers meet. Carving began in 713 and was finished in 803, under the Tang dynasty, with the aim of calming the rough waters for passing boats. The statue is about 71 metres tall, its shoulders about 28 metres wide, and hidden drainage channels in its hair and robes have protected it for centuries.

Together with nearby Mount Emei it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996. Visitors often ask whether the Leshan Giant Buddha is worth the long drive; seeing its calm face looking down from the cliff, almost everyone agrees that it is.

Seeing the Buddha by boat

On this private Leshan Giant Buddha tour the statue is seen from the river by boat rather than on foot. The boat leaves from a pier in Leshan and sails out where the rivers meet, then stops in front of the cliff so you see the whole seated figure at once, together with the two warrior guardians carved into the rock on either side. It is the only way to take in the full size of the Buddha in one view and in one photo.

The boat visit takes about an hour including the transfer to the pier, so it avoids the long queues on the cliff stairway and suits children and older travellers. Our team books the boat tickets in advance so you do not miss a departure, and the ticket is paid on the day.