My wife and I travelled to Yunnan in April, 2008, and found the drive between Lijiang and Shangri-La to be both very beautiful and easy driving (much of it on new, well-engineered, smooth roads). Our hotel in Lijiang hailed a regular taxi for us, negotiated enroute stops and a low price, and off we went (the driver returned back to Lijiang later that day, either by himself or after picking up a tourist for the trip back....). We stayed in Shangri-La at the Songtsam Hotel, which is brilliantly located directly beside the Songtsam Lama temple.

Our flight to Yunnan was from Hangzhou (HGH) to Kunming on China Southern, purchased from the domestic CZ website at a huge discount to what the same flight was being priced at on Ctrip and eLong. Our short flight out of DIG (Shangri-La) to Kunming (KMG) on MU cost considerably more than the HGH - KMG CZ flight as we were never able to locate a discounted fare. The departure from Yunnan, KMG to Shenzhen (SZX) was the cheapest of our flights, presumably because of the many competitive airlines covering that route, though the best price at that time was again found on the CZ website.