China Panda Tours

When you travel with ChinaTours.com and join a China panda tour with us, our approach and your tour experience will be different to a panda tour with other tour operators. To help ensure you get the best views and most time with these incredible animals, your guide will make arrangements to arrive early. Why is this important? Because pandas are so popular with both domestic and foreign tourists and we don’t want this to impact your experience.

If you take a China panda tour and visit the Chengdu Research and Breeding Centre you’ll discover it’s always busy. By arriving early, you’ll be able to truly enjoy the experience. This is especially important if you’re traveling with children, who will want to see as many pandas as possible on their visit.

Travelers wanting a unique and memorable experience of their China panda tour can also book with ChinaTours.com to visit Dujiangyan Panda Base. It is here that lovely travel memories are made (as an optional extra). Under special supervision from panda carers, visitors can even be photographed with these special animals and receive a certificate as a memento of the experience.

On ChinaTours.com China panda tours you can make the most of this special experience if you visit Dujiangyan Panda Base. It’s here you can enjoy a Dujiangyan Panda Keeper Experience, which allows travelers to work as a panda volunteer for the day. This is a rare opportunity during which volunteers can:

• Clean the panda enclosure
• Explore the panda research base
• Hand feed pandas
• Get involved in afternoon cleaning and feeding
• Make panda food.

We offer a visit to Dujiangyan Panda Base as a private tour, allowing you and your friends or family to enjoy this experience together.

Other highlights to be enjoyed when you discover pandas in Chengdu include:

• A friendly English-speaking guide to accompany you on tour. Arrangements will be made for pick up from your hotel and for the duration of your tour. You can relax knowing your guide will be there every step of the way to ensure you get the best vantage points for observing the pandas in their enclosures.
• A relaxed schedule. Although we like our customers to be on the road early for their panda tour, once there, we like to keep a relaxed schedule. That way you’ll have plenty of photo opportunities – and there’s never enough of those when it comes to the world’s cutest animal!
• Flexibility with tour options. Everyone has their own preferences for travel and it’s this very reason we provide so much flexibility around our tour options. Choose from a small group, private, and even your very own personally designed custom tour. Our specially designed small group and private tours include panda visits, while a custom tour can be created to include pandas – and lots more – to suit your time and budget.

Of course, a Chengdu panda tour is loads of fun, but there’s no need to limit your adventure to one city. China is a vast country and we offer travel to 20 destinations. Many of our tours are delivered over multiple days and allow generous amounts of time in each location. Must-see cities include Beijing, Xi’an, and Shanghai, however, there are many other places where you can learn about and enjoy the local history, culture, people, and cuisines. Whether the attraction for you is big city bustle, the best of nature, or traditions, culture and art, we have a tour to suit. And if you can’t find what you’re after, we’ll help you create the tour of your travel dreams.

Also known as the Giant Panda Internship, this unique program is unlike any other. It is designed to give participants a direct hands-on experience with giant pandas. But more than that, it provides education and raises awareness. If you love animals and care about the protection of pandas, visiting one of the giant panda volunteer programs is special. There’s no doubt the panda volunteer experience is fun, however there’s a serious side to the Giant Panda Volunteer Program too. Volunteers learn about the living conditions and environment that pandas need to thrive. They’re also exposed to the challenges researchers face in the protection and breeding of pandas as they struggle to maintain numbers. Want to know what we love about the Giant Panda Volunteer Program? It inspires the volunteers – most of whom have traveled from around the world! After just one day working as a panda volunteer most feel compelled to share the important message about panda research and protection. For people who love to create beautiful travel memories, we think that’s a win-win!

The dedicated panda researchers work hard to make the Giant Panda Volunteer experience truly unique and memorable. Yes, pandas are cute and cuddly animals, but keeping them well (and fed!) is a serious job. It’s why there’s an expectation that every Giant Panda Volunteer Program participant will ‘muck in’.
Here’s what you can expect a typical day to look like as a volunteer:

• Carry panda food – It’s no secret that pandas in captivity eat bamboo almost exclusively, but did you know they also eat fruit and other feed like specially created ‘panda nests? As a volunteer, you’ll be required to carry large volumes of food to their enclosures and ‘rooms’ for consumption.
• Clean up the bamboo mess – While pandas love their bamboo, they mostly eat the roots. Bamboo is low in nutritional value, which means they must eat huge quantities to satisfy their nutritional requirements – and that means a lot of mess. On the Giant Panda Volunteer Program, participants have the job of cleaning up the bamboo so being prepared to get a little dirty is all part of the experience.
• Feed the pandas – Certainly one of the highlights of the panda volunteer experience is feeding time. Volunteers get involved in weighing, preparing and serving food. Then it’s time to serve up the fresh bamboo, apples, specially prepared ‘panda’s nest’, and vegetables. After mealtimes, volunteers step back in to clean up, weigh any leftover bamboo, milk, and panda poo!
• Do the panda household chores – Pandas aren’t fans of housework and that’s why it’s the job of volunteers to clean the panda’s house and playground. Maintaining the health of pandas in the research centres is vital so living and indoor play areas are disinfected to provide a clean and comfortable environment for the giant panda.
• Share the love – Pandas don’t have a cute and cuddly reputation for nothing. No panda volunteer experience would be complete without showing some love to these beautiful animals, although volunteers are required to wear special protection suits to prevent transfer of germs and to keep pandas healthy.
• Get up close – Volunteers have an opportunity to clean the giant panda enclosure and observe their behavior, which changes over time as they mature and depending on different influencing factors like breeding time.