"The trek was 9 days (although can probably be in about 8 if walking longer hours per day and faster). We started at Wallabi Village (near the hot springs) and finished at the gate of Yading. If we understood correctly there are 2 possible routes - we took the more eastern one.

The trek was very beautiful though very difficult as well. Every day you go up and down mountains - sometimes higher sometimes lower, but there is climbing almost every day. Also in the last 2-3 days it's mainly going up all the time to reach eventually the 4,800 pass (Yako Mountain) and from there go down to Yading. Views are beautiful especially when the weather is good (and we had very bad weather in the last 4 days) - mountains, villages of different minorities, amazing green valleys, rivers (like Sulio River) and Tibetan pilgrims.

Opposite to what we thought at the beginning the trek only includes a very small part of Yading itself. We guess one should see the spectacular views of Yading mountains (during the trek) from Yako mountain in the last day or two - but again, for us it was fogy and raining, so we didn't see a lot of Yading itself. A bit disappointing, but nothing to do about it...

We were 7 people in the group + 7 horses + 3 guides (actually 1 guide and 2 "horse people"). We paid 40Y per horse per day and 100Y for the guides (all 3 of them) per day - 490Y per person for the 9 days. In addition it cost us 200Y per person for food (including a sheep and a chicken on the way) and basic stuff for cooking. Most of the food was bought at the beginning in Yongning and a bit more in one of the villages on the way. To summarize we think it's a very beautiful hike and probably even more than we experienced with better weather conditions. One has to take into account though that it's fairly difficult and fairly long (although in our group there was also a 62 years old that slowly but bravely finished the hike)."