HA GIANG, THE ROOF OF VIETNAM
- Price: US$2890 / person
- Tour Dates:
– 25 May to 1 June 2023 & 31 August to 7 September 2023
– 23 to 30 May 2024 & 29 August to 5 September 2024 - Duration: 8 days / 7 nights
- Group Size: 6 persons max.
- Level: Beginners to Advanced
Tour Highlights
- The incredible karst plateau of Dong Van, listed in UNESCO Global Geoparks Network
- The visit of H’mong villages and encounters with the local population
- The sunday markets of Dong Van and Meo Vac
- The spectacular road from Dong Van to Meo Vac, and the Ma Pi Leng passage.
- The magnificent rice terraces of Hoang Su Phi, listed as a Vietnam National Heritage site
Closed to foreigners for a long time, the faraway province of Ha Giang remains on the sideline of traditional tourist trails. It offers a diversified palette of landscapes and a pretty mosaic of ethnic groups, barely influenced by the turmoil and development of modern life. From the spectacular rice terraces of Hoang Su Phi and its various local tribes, to the breathtaking karst landscape of Dong Van and its White Hmong populated villages, we invite you to a fabulous photographic adventure to the limits of the northern mountainous region of Vietnam.
We organize this tour twice a year, during the rice transplantation season and the harvest season, a period during which the ethnic groups spend most of their days in the fields, to the photographer’s great delight.
Day 1
● Hanoi ▸ Quan Ba
● 7 hours’ travelling / 1 hour photography
We will leave Hanoi early in the morning to reach Quan Ba in the late afternoon. As we’ll move forward to our destination, the sceneries will become more and more spectacular, crossing stunning hilly landscapes, corn and manioc fields, tea plantations and after reaching Ha Giang town, we’ll come upon our first rice terraces.
Just before Quan Ba, we will pass the “Heaven’s Gate”, with its mountains stretching to the horizon, marking the entrance to Dong Ba Karst Plateau, listed in UNESCO Global Geoparks Network. A magnificent point of view to come back home with stunning landscape photos, hopefully helped by a nice weather.
Dinner and night in our Red Dao eco-lodge.
Day 2
● Quan Ba ▸ Pho Cao Village ▸ Dong Van
● 5 hours’ travelling / 4 hours of photography
We will start the day with a beautiful valley below Quan Ba well filled with rice fields. We will then delve into Dong Van Plateau, an extremely wild region made of limestone pitons and black granite needles: a truly breathtaking panorama.
After lunch in Yen Minh, we will head to Pho Cao, a superb H’mong village with some 200 years old houses, so far my favorite village in the area, with Pleiades of villagers vacant to their daily occupations of another age before finally reaching Dong Van in the late afternoon.
Dinner and night in Dong Van.
Day 3
● Dong Van
● 1,5 hours’ travelling / 6 hours of photography
Today we will explore the Dong Van Karst plateau wonders and it’s surrounding rice fields to make beautiful landscape photos, while looking for opportunities to develop your people photography talent, as we meet the black H’mong people who live in the area.
Dinner and night in Dong Van.
Day 4
● Dong Van ▸ Meo Vac
● 2 hours’ travelling / 7 hours of photography
We’ll have much to do on that morning, as we’ll go visit 2 dominical markets, linked together by one of the most spectacular road in Vietnam: better get your gear ready! The ethnic minorities of many different groups leave their home villages very early in the morning to reach Dong Van market, a place to trade merchandises but also a gathering site to socialize and meet with others.
We will then head to Meo Vac, home to the Black H’mong Eagle’s Nest. Upon arrival we’ll discover the livestock market, a one of its kind location in the Ha Giang province, where between 400 and 1000 cattle are traded during the course of the morning, along with many horses, pigs and dogs, before visiting the main market.
After lunch, we will wonder around Meo Vac and the Ma Pi Leng passage taking multiple photography stops, following a road meandering through the mountain sides and getting through the Ma Pi Leng passage, overlooking a vertiginous canyon and the No Que River gorges further down.
Dinner and night at the Auberge de Meo Vac eco-resort.
Day 5
● Meo Vac ▸ Ha Giang
● 6 hours’ travelling / many landscape photography stops
After an outing to enjoy the first rays of sunshine on the karst peaks nearby Meo Vac, we will head back to Ha Giang town following a different road surrounded by breathtaking karst mountain landscapes. We will take our time and make multiple landscape photography stops. We will arrive in Ha Giang town in the early evening for dinner.
Dinner and night in a Lodge.
Day 6
● Ha Giang ▸ Hoang Su Phi
● 2 hours’ travelling / 4 hours photography
After spending the early morning hours in lovely Tay ethnic villages nearby Ha Giang town we will head to our resort in Hoang Su Phi, nested in a beautiful rice field valley.
After lunch we will go exploring to a nearby-forested area dotted with rice terraces, and meet up with the Dap ethnic people in Ban Peo and Ban Nhung villages.
Dinner and night in our Ecolodge.
Day 7
● Hoang Su Phi Rice Terraces
● 2 hours’ travelling / 6 hours of photography
The rice terraces of Hoang Su Phi have existed for more than three centuries; many generations of farmers from La Chi, Dao or Nung ethnic groups have shaped those hill curves, dug up the irrigation canals and terraced the mountainsides in stairs to cultivate rice. These rice fields have a total surface area of 630 km2 and are listed since 2012 as a Vietnam National Heritage site.
In the morning, we will go explore the village of Ban Luoc. It is home to the country’s largest rice terrace field, stretching over 200 acres and with an altitude difference of more than 1500 meters, and is consisted of thousands of successive platforms separated from each other by one meter. In the afternoon, we will visit Ban Phung Village with its equally visually stunning rice terraces.
Dinner and night in our Ecolodge.
Day 8
● Hoang Su Phi ▸ End of the adventure in Hanoi
● Final photo review / 7 hours’ travelling
We will spend our morning doing our final photo review checking everyone’s photo series.
After lunch we will take the road back to Hanoi that we will reach in the end of the day.
End of the tour.
Ha Giang, The Roof of Vietnam
Testimonials
“Trip of a Lifetime”
Sarah M., USA
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“No better Vietnam photo guide”
Bill M., USA
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“A Dream, Come True”
Trisha F., Australia
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“Totally outstanding”
David H., UK
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Tour Details
- Price: US$2890 / person
- Tour Dates:
– 25 May to 1 June 2023 & 31 August to 7 September 2023
– 23 to 30 May 2024 & 29 August to 5 September 2024 - Group Size: 6 persons max.
- Level: Beginners to Advanced
Includes
- Ecolodges in Quan Ba and Hoang Su Phi
- A comfortable 3* hotel in Dong Van
- Auberge de Meo Vac eco-resort
- Homestay with private room near Ha Giang
- Private air-conditioned transportation
- Meals and non-alcoholic beverages throughout the tour
- Snacks and water during excursions
- Sites entry fees (if applicable)
Excludes
- International/domestic flight to arrive and depart from Hanoi
- Airport transfers on arrival and departure
- Entry Visa to Vietnam
- Travel insurance (please make sure you are insured)
- Alcoholic beverages
- Personal expenses
- Tips
Optional
- Single room accommodation (when possible): +US$280
General Information
Anyone who loves travel and photography is welcomed, whatever your level of experience – the most important thing is enthusiasm. Our tours can be summed up in three words – sharing, friendship and smiles. Your non-photographer friends & family are also welcomed to join – as long as they don’t mind hanging around while the photographers do their thing!
With Arnaud’s advice and guidance, you’ll quickly become more familiar with your equipment and refine your eye for a good image without being swamped by technical details. You’ll learn how to read light, how to compose a shot, and how to tell a visual story – in short, you’ll release more of your creative potential.
Mastering photography is a long and enjoyable journey, and one without end. The main objective of our tours is for you to become a better photographer by the end of each day.
The best camera is the one you already have! Travel light – a DSLR with wide angle and zoom lenses is more than sufficient for our tours. Hybrids, compacts and even smartphones are equally welcome! Other than that, all you’ll need is a fully-charged battery and enough memory cards. If you can, bring along your laptop so we can critique your photos and also show you a few tips for using Lightroom.
You’ll get to meet the local population, find out about their way of life, and experience their friendly company – all while taking some fantastic photos! We’ll show you how to break the ice with the Vietnamese and how to make your camera a valuable ally in making connections with them.
We don’t impose strict itineraries on our travelers; every one of our journeys in Vietnam is unique – no two tours are ever the same! Spontaneous encounters and varying light conditions create different photography opportunities every time. One moment you’ll be standing on the edge of a rice field photographing a farmer at work; the next you’ll be invited into a local house for tea; or maybe you’ll be navigating your way along a narrow canal by sampan or a country lane on the back of a motorbike – most of the time we’ll just go with the flow!
Our maximum group size is six. This enables us to give every photographer plenty of individual attention, and also makes it easier for us to blend into the environment and not be overly intrusive when we’re meeting the locals.
A keen photographer of landscapes and people, Arnaud leads photography tours in the Mekong Delta and other beautiful places in Vietnam. Before becoming a photographer he spent ten years in Vietnam as a tour operator and knows the country intimately. Photography has always been his passion, and so one day he decided to turn that passion into a living – now he devotes his time to helping fellow photography enthusiasts discover little-known and picturesque parts of Vietnam, while improving their photographic skills.
