West Hangzhou- Tea Plantations

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Practical Information

• Hangzhou can easily be reached by train from Shanghai. Make sure you book your train tickets in advance. We booked only a week ahead.

• We took a car. Note that cars can not always go all the way to your hotel.

• Skip the organised tea plantation tours or guides. We booked one and wouldn’t recommend it. It’s better to do it yourself. Tours just take you there and allow you to pick for a while, often ending at tea farms where they try to sell you products. It's better to explore yourself.

• Factor in shuttle buses. Some temples can only be reached by shuttle bus, so keep this in mind when planning.

• Walk as much as you can. Many areas are perfect for exploring on foot.

• There are many great hotels in the Tea Plantation area. Consider what kind of location works best for you: closer to hiking trails, in the middle of a forest, or closer to restaurants?

• Visit my blog on a Hangzhou weekend trip as well. This includes the lake and the Lingyin Temple.

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Hotels

As I mentioned earlier, there are many excellent hotels in this area. During my first visit, I stayed at Wuta Xinshe, a comfortable and beautifully designed hotel. From there, it was easy to walk to nearby restaurants or head straight out on one of the hiking trails.

On my second visit, I stayed at Hangzhou Yunzhongjing · West Lake Senyin Hotel. It is a stunning property, but honestly a level of luxury that I do not really need on a hiking trip like this, especially since there are so many simpler yet charming hotels in the area.

That said, I would still recommend it because of its exceptional location. Guests are picked up and dropped off at the edge of the forest by golf cart, and from the hotel you can step directly onto the hiking trails. The setting is absolutely beautiful, surrounded by forest and nature on all sides.

If you do not mind spending a bit more, I would definitely consider staying here. However, if you would rather keep things more budget-friendly, there are plenty of other attractive options in the area.

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Hiking

In this area, I never really planned my hikes in advance. I would simply find the start of a trail near my hotel and set off from there. Along the way, you will come across plenty of signposted routes, making it easy to adjust your plans as you go. One of the things I enjoy most about hiking here is the combination of forest trails, tea plantations, and small villages.

If you would like more detailed descriptions of the different routes, I recommend visiting this website. You can also plan your hikes around some of the area's temples.

For example, we did a long hike on Saturday and visited the beautiful Faxi Temple on Sunday morning. The temple is tucked away in the hills and surrounded by nature.

You do need to take a shuttle bus to reach it, but this is easy and inexpensive. When we visited in the morning, the temple was also remarkably quiet. A few weeks earlier, we had visited Lingyin Temple. While it is certainly worth seeing, it was much more crowded. Personally, I found the peaceful atmosphere and natural surroundings of Faxi Temple even more impressive.