Following the Tea Horse Road in China

Older people in Yunnan can still remember the days when merchants with mules plied the Tea Horse Road: the last few caravans "trickled" through this millennium-old network of trading routes between Tibet and southern China in the 1980s, said Chris Schalkx in Condé Nast Traveller.

Today, retracing their steps is a good way to explore the region's history and culture. In Yunnan (a province larger than Germany in China's far southwest), the Lux hotel group has opened eight properties around one of the main historic routes (now a Tarmacked road) from the city of Lijiang north to the Tibetan border. Their art-filled interiors and the guided activities they offer help "bring alive" stories about the past. The merchants carried tea from Yunnan's "steamy" southern valleys to exchange for horses, musk and medicinal herbs in Tibet, and Lijiang, in the north of the province, was a major staging post.

Popular now with domestic tourists, the city is a picturesque place, set against a backdrop of snow-capped Himalayan peaks. In its lively morning market, you'll hear a dozen different dialects spoken – Yunnan is home to roughly 25 of China's 56 recognised ethnic groups, including the Naxi, in the heartland of which Lijiang lies. Indeed, the first village on the road north, Baoshan Shitoucheng, is a "Jenga-like stack of houses" in the Naxi style, with "airy" courtyards and tiled roofs, tumbling down the mountainside towards the Yangtze River.

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It's a place that seems unchanged since its founding 1,300 years ago. From Baoshan, the road climbs ever higher, snaking through pine forests and wide, terraced valleys. "Low-slung" Naxi dwellings give way to Tibetan farmhouses with rammed-earth walls and, past the tourist town of Zhongdian (recently renamed Shangri- La), the way becomes quieter.

Prayer wheels spin "into a rainbow blur" along the verge, and at the "incense-perfumed" Ganden Dongzhulin Monastery, you're likely to find yourself admiring its richly painted walls alone.