The Jingmai forests
The canopy-shaded tea gardens of Jingmai Mangjing — walk the forest paths between villages with a tea family's guide and learn to read the leaf.
Destinations / Yunnan /
Pu'er.
The mountains that named the tea: thousand-year trees under canopy shade on the Jingmai range, villages that press and taste the leaf as they always have, and the first kilometres of the tea-horse road.
Explore the guide ↓Pu'er prefecture · 1,400 m · the tea mountains
- The forest
- Jingmai, UNESCO 2023
- The villages
- Blang & Dai
- The road
- Tea-horse, kilometre zero
- The window
- Mar – Apr · Sep – Oct
The mountain that named the leaf.
Pu'er city is a waypoint; the Pu'er mountains are the destination. On the Jingmai range, Blang and Dai villages tend tea gardens shaded under tall forest canopy — the ancient tea forest landscape inscribed by UNESCO in 2023 as a living, still-farmed cultural system. Some of the trees here are a thousand years old; the picking, withering, firing and pressing still happen in the villages, and a guest who wants to learn the leaf learns it from the families who grow it.
North and east, the six great tea mountains fed the caravans that pressed the tea into bricks and carried them over four vertical kilometres to Lhasa — the tea-horse road's first kilometres are walking country to this day. Our tea journeys hold village nights on Jingmai, a pressing session with a tea family, and the first mountain kilometres on foot: the road at its origin.
The tea country's anchors.
Five stops around the prefecture.
Jingmai village nights
Blang and Dai village guesthouses among the gardens — morning mist over the canopy, tea for breakfast and pressing sessions in the courtyards.
Tea pressing
Weigh, steam, wrap and press your own cake with a village family — the souvenir that actually teaches you the tea.
The tea-horse first kilometres
The mountain paths north from the gardens — stone stairs, way-station ruins and the caravans' first climb. Half a day on foot.
Pu'er city
The prefecture capital's tea markets and museum — useful, not the point. Break the road journey here, sleep well, and go to the mountains.
Getting it right.
The details that make the tea country work.
Pacing
Two village nights on Jingmai is the minimum for the forest, the pressing and the mist. One-night versions are the market tour we are not selling.
Getting in
Pu'er city is 3 hours by expressway or rail from Kunming; Jingmai is a further 3 hours south — the road line to Jinghong runs through it.
Buying tea
Taste before you buy, always. We take you to the real gardens and away from the fake 'ancient tree' theatrics — the village pressing session doubles as the buying lesson.
Where you sleep
Village guesthouses on Jingmai — simple, warm and family-run. The mist mornings over the canopy are the reason the beds are worth it.
Pairing
The tea line runs naturally to Xishuangbanna (the tea-and-Mekong journey) or back to the terraces of the southeast — one road line either way.
Plan the tea days.
Tell us how deep you want to go — tasting, pressing or the caravan paths — and we will build the mountain nights around it.
Start my journey brief ↗