Sichuan cooking is not one flavour. It is at least twenty-three, and the ones travellers remember are the ones nobody warns them about: the cold chicken dressed in sesame and numbing oil, the pickled vegetables served before anything else, the soup that tastes of nothing until the third spoon.
We build this trip around meals with an hour of walking between them. Your guide orders in dialect, tells the kitchen how much chilli you can actually take, and knows which stall is worth standing at.
Every day here is a suggestion. Your guide rewrites it with you the evening before — that is the whole point of travelling privately.
Arrive, eat. Market morning, tea house afternoon, hotpot evening with a local family. One day for pandas and the Bamboo Park, because you came all this way.
Giant Buddha from the river, then a monastery lunch above the clouds. Back in Chengdu for cold noodles at a stall that opens at 8 pm.
Two hours by train. Hotpot at its source, a night walk through Hongya Cave, noodles for breakfast at 6:30 because that is when the good shop closes.
Morning market, a final bowl of xiaomian, then the airport with a jar of chilli oil in your bag.
Tell your guide your true limit on day one. Kitchens will cook to it without insult; they do it for their own children.
Vegetarian, halal, gluten-free and nut allergies are workable in Chengdu with planning. We brief in Chinese, in writing, before each meal.
Bottled water everywhere, including at restaurants. Ice is fine in hotels and modern cafés, less so at street stalls.
March–May and September–November. July and August are hot and humid; December is grey but the food is unchanged.
One brief, one reply within 24 hours, two or three guides who have done this trip before.
Start planning — it’s free