Lugu Lake
 

I'm planning a trip to Lugu Lake in the fall. The nearest airport is NLH, but it's nearly an hour shuttle ride on a less-than-well-maintained road, according to some reviewers on TripAdvisor (from a few years ago). The airport is also at a high elevation with heavy fog sometimes, so the risk of flight cancellation is relatively high, and there's only one daily flight from KMG. The alternative is a 4-hour+ bus ride from LJG, which I hope to avoid if possible. I'd appreciate if anyone has any experience to share about getting to and around Lugu Lake.

I haven't responded to this thread (until now) because I haven't been to Lugu Lake and my experience in northwest Yunnan predates NLH airport and the Dali-Lijiang-ShangriLa railways (which, appears to be a single line).

I've also been thinking about exploring the general area this fall, but without much advance planning or structure (i.e. get to Lijiang and go from there). I'll keep this thread in mind if I stumble upon any interesting insights, though.

An Indigo hotel just opened a few days ago there:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ho...pcnz?entry=ttu

It's obviously too early to have any reviews of the hotel, but does anyone have any opinions about its location? Or any recommendations about other hotels in the Lugu Lake area?

I went to Lugu lake by bus from Lijiang. It is long but quite a nice drive. Especially with the new road. There are many small local hotels along the lake. We had nothing booked and just picked on once we got there. We also spent a couple of days in Lige and we should reserved our hotel for this one as there is less to choose from.

Thanks for sharing your experience. We've also decided to take the bus to Lugu Lake from Lijiang, but leave Lugu Lake by air. If our outbound flight is canceled due to fog at NLH, we'll just spend an extra day or two at Lugu Lake. I understand Didi doesn't work there. Do you have any issues getting around the lake?

Flight between Lugu Lake airport (NLH) and Kunming (KMG)
 

​​​​​Answering some of my own questions, I wouldn't recommend taking the flight between NLH and KMG. Our return flight from NLH to SHA via KMG was canceled (and it wasn't even due to weather) with only a few days notice. We had to scramble to secure new flight and hotel reservations (and modify some existing ones) with a very short notice (and at significantly higher cost) because apparently flights on many other dates between the two airports were also canceled.

Thanks for getting back to us.

Other than the flights, how was the trip?

The rest of the trip was fine. The newly opened Hotel Indigo is good choice if you don't mind it's more remote location. There's no ride-sharing in the area (or a car rental place even if you're licensed to drive in China). We hired a driver and the cost was very reasonable. Hotel Indigo also has cars for hire but you have to reserve one day in advance.