A trek in western Sichuan is usually described by its passes. The nights matter just as much, because on a plateau trip the sleeping altitude is the training plan: climb too high too fast and the pass day is lost. So the routes are built as a ladder of nights, and the day cards name every rung.
Hotels as a ladder.
The ladder looks like this. Kangding at 2,600 metres is the first rung on the group trek — “the night at 2,600 metres is the first rung of the acclimatisation ladder”, in the day card’s own words. Rilong at 3,100 metres is the Siguniang rung on the northern routes. Xinduqiao at 3,400 metres is the classic warm-up town: the panorama hike sleeps there on both ends of its high days, “no packing, an early dinner”, and the in-depth trek starts from it. The night is deliberately high, and deliberately a hotel with a restaurant and a heating problem you will forgive.
Inside the reserves.
Wildlife nights are about position, not luxury. The red panda tour spends both its nights at the park hotel inside Labahe reserve — being checked in by early afternoon is the whole tactic, because the animals work the hours at the edges of the day. The mammal tour uses the same hotel on its Labahe leg, and the nature-reserve routes sleep inside the reserves wherever there is a bed: simple, the best available, and fifteen minutes from the trail instead of two hours. In Yading the position play is stricter: the photo tour takes four of its seven nights in the village inside the sanctuary, so the group is on the holy-lake trails before the gates open.
The canvas nights.
The camping routes pitch their arithmetic openly. The group trek is five tent nights of eight — a supported camp you walk into each evening with a day pack while the crew and the horses move it. The in-depth trek is three of eight, book-ended by hotels. The Yala trek is three of four, and its middle night is the famous one: tents by three open hot-spring pools at 4,100 metres, a bath with the whole valley above you. The Riwuqi trek is two of three, both at the same grass camp at 3,850 metres — pitching once and sleeping twice is the quietest version of a camp trek. In season, on Riwuqi and Yala, the night can move to a village near the trail head instead; the guide calls it the day before.
The monastery floor.
Two routes sleep at Gongga Gompa, the monastery under the mountain’s south face: the in-depth trek spends its second and third nights in the monastery dormitory at 3,750 metres, and the 24-day in-depth journey returns there on its days twenty and twenty-one. It is simple — a bunk, shared washing, prayer flags cracking in the wind outside — and it is the single most memorable night on any of our routes, because the morning belongs to the courtyard, the monks and the mountain before anyone starts walking. The in-depth trek adds one more lodging you will not often repeat: a village lodge at 4,000 metres under Langgatso, the mirror lake.
Villages and homestays.
The long journey west is a lesson in how many kinds of bed Kham offers: Rilong and Danba, a Tagong guesthouse, Ganzi, a Dzogchen retreat town, a Dopu valley village, Batang, a Genyen village homestay under the north face, Litang, the Yading village, a monastery dormitory, Yulongxi, and Kangding to finish. Twenty-three nights, none in a tent. On the shorter routes the village stays appear by season, and in Danba the stone villages below the ruined watchtowers are the destination in their own right.
Who carries what.
One division runs through all of this. On every supported route you carry a day pack — water, layers, lunch — and the camp travels by horse and crew without you. The one exception is the self-supported Konka trek, where everything goes in an 80-litre pack on your own back, three camp nights of it; its page is blunt about the experience that requires. Everyone else walks the same trails with a light pack, and the packing list is written for exactly that. The altitude guide explains why the ladder matters as much as the boots.
Night-by-night details checked 7 November 2026 against the route pages.
Sleep through it yourself?
The Gongga in-depth trek, 9 days
Five ways to walk Minya Konka, compared