Giant Panda Tour – Sichuan Mammals Rare Mammals – March-April 2022 – 1 place remaining

When people think of China they rarely think of wildlife and in particular mammalwatching and if they do think of Chinese animals that inevitably think of giant pandas. This one species is so iconic and so famous around the world that it is hard to imagine them as wild animals that live a life completely removed from people, but in recent years more and more giant pandas are living wild lives away from the disturbance of people. This is testament to fantastic conservation work and we will be hopefully benefiting from this conservation work as we enter a huge bamboo ecosystem in the mountains of one of the last remaining wild giant panda habitats. By hiking in this forest we will be in prime panda habitat and will hopefully be rewarded with one of the rarest sights in nature.

This specialist wildlife tour of Sichuan doesn’t just focus on giant pandas, in fact there are three very different habitats we will be exploring. (1) The bamboo zone of the mountainous Wolong ecosystem and then (2) to the edge of the vast rolling grasslands and rocky and rugged wilderness of the Tibetan plateau and in particular Ruoergai; where high altitude species such as Pallas’s cat and Chinese mountain cat live and then (3) down into the forested mountains of Tangjiahe where tufted deer, Chinese serow, Chinese gorals, northern hog badgers and Asiatic black bears live.

On this Royle Safaris Sichuan Mammal Tour we will spend a considerable amount of time exploring these habitats for wildlife and trying to see as many of these species as possible and hopefully get some rare species too. There is special focus and in fact days dedicated to spotting both species of panda (despite being completely unrelated to each other; the giant panda and Styan’s red panda inhabit the same habitats and feed on the plentiful bamboo) as well as searches for other specialist species of the Sichuan mammalwatching circuit such as Pallas’s Cat, Chinese Mountain Cat, Tufted Deer, Sichuan Takin and Himalayan Wolf.

This mammal watching holiday of China will have you exploring and experiencing rural China at the end of winter, this is a time of year and locations which are not often visited by tourists. Everything from the food, culture, architecture you will encounter will differ from the typical Chinese imagery that most people have when they thing of the superpower that China is nowadays and the ultra modern cities.

We have also had some incredible success on our past trips here, with over 55 species of mammals observed in total, including a total of 4 Giant Pandas being seen over 2 trips. The highlight sighting being a mother and cub in a tree for over 1 hour and a sighting of a male at 5m range!

Mother and sub Giant pandas in Sichuan – picture from Samuel Marlin

So we are aiming to repeat this success during the giant panda breeding season (northern hemisphere springtime) in 2022. We have some private tour departures as well as two group tours, one only has one space available whilst the other has some good availability. So if you are interested in visiting Sichuan to look for mammals and other wildlife and in particular pandas and small cats you can check out our itinerary here. Our first trip has just one place remaining and is due to run from 22nd March – 4th April 2022 and our second departure is set for 3-16 May 2022.

This specialist mammal watching tour is one of our range of bear watching tours we are world leaders in these specialist mammalwatching holidays, with expert guides and more time spent looking for targeted species than other tours, Royle Safaris is ideally situated to maximise mammal sightings and with our scientific background we are at the cutting edge of rare and elusive mammal sightings and can establish sustainable ecotourism in some of the best rare mammal watching destinations in the world.

If you would like to know more information about this Sichuan Mammals Tour you can click here or contact us in addition to booking places on our small group tour we can also arrange private tours for any party size from 1 person on a solo trip to 10,  people on dates you choose (subject to availability).