Luoyang Departure: Wanxian Mountain, Guoliang Village and Baligou, 3 Days 2 Nights

The coach leaves Luoyang at seven thirty, takes the expressway north and reaches Huixian in three and a half hours. A bowl of mutton soup in the town below, then switch to the park vehicle for the climb. The cliff road is the part worth watching: the tunnel follows the rock face, openings cut at intervals let the light in slab by slab, and outside is a drop of several hundred metres. Off at the village gate, bags into the guesthouse, and a slow walk through the lanes before dark.

Attraction introduction: Guoliang village sits on the cliff top in north-west Huixian, inside the Wanxian Mountain park. In the 1970s the villagers cut a passage through the rock with hammers and steel rods, starting in 1972 and opening to traffic in 1977: 1,250 metres long, with thirty-five windows left in the outer wall for light. Houses are stacked stone with slate roofs.

Tips: The village is five or six degrees colder than the valley, and nights need a thick quilt, so bring a fleece after October. Guests generally find the cliff road reads better from a moving vehicle than on foot, because the windows come at you one after another. In practice, keep day one to the transfer and save your legs.

Up early for the village. Stone houses step down the cliff edge, and past the yard walls there is nothing but air, with the valley road visible far below. Walk to the old stone stair cut into the face, the only way up and down before the tunnel existed. Lunch at the guesthouse, then out of the valley and an hour south to Baligou, where the night is spent at the mouth of the gorge.

Attraction introduction: Guoliang is known as the village on the cliff, its walls dry-laid from flat stones and its roofs slate. The stone stair was the sole route down the cliff until the tunnel opened. Baligou, in Shangbali township, is part of the southern Taihang, a gorge with water running all year and a waterfall at its headwall.

Tips: Keep back from the unfenced edge, because the stone weathers and crumbles underfoot. Guests generally find the village quiet at first light and the viewpoints empty. In practice, the transfer is left for the afternoon so nobody is hurried and dinner comes right after arrival.

After breakfast enter the gorge, take the shuttle up the valley and walk the rest beside the stream. Water threads between boulders, drops into white ropes where the bed falls away, and at the head the flow leaves the cliff lip in one sheet into a deep pool, spray reaching the path. Back the same way, lunch at the gorge mouth, and the coach returns to Luoyang by about seven in the evening.

Attraction introduction: The Baligou valley follows a fault in the Taihang, walled by red quartz sandstone, with water in the bed all year. The Tianhe waterfall leaves the top of the headwall in a drop of nearly two hundred metres, the deepest point of the walk. Red Stone River and the Skyline Crack lie along the same path, on flat ground and gentle slopes.

Tips: Spray keeps the steps damp and mossy, so grip matters and camera lenses fog quickly. Guests generally find the light best in the morning, coming in low from the gorge mouth. In practice, day three stays on the main valley path so the drive home is not done in the dark.