Sapa Trekking Tour with Train

At 20:30, our guide will collect you from your hotel and escort you to the train station, making sure you are completely set for your journey before leaving you to enjoy the night train. 

Another guide will collect you from Lao Cai train station at 06:00 AM and take you to Sapa, roughly an hour away past splendid mountain scenery. 

After checking into the hotel, we take a drive for 40 minutes to Vietnam’s highest mountain pass, the Tram Ton Pass, at about 2000m above sea level. Stunning vistas abound both above and below us here, of the dramatic mountains towering above the verdant greenery of Hoang Lien National Park below. 

For 30 minutes, we will trek through a beautiful forest to the Love Waterfall, admiring the cascade of water before returning to Tram Ton and driving back to Sapa.

After lunch in Sapa town, we walk 3kms to Cat Cat village, which will give us an insight into the age-old traditions and rituals of the Black H’mong hill tribe. We can chat with them to learn about life in this most beautiful of areas before heading to a nearby waterfall for a break and photo opportunity.

Around the mountainside on a dirt trail, we experience more natural splendour while trekking along narrow rivers, ending in the village of Y Linh Ho, another bastion of Black H’mong culture. We will take a short rest at the Muong Hoa Stream before climbing back to the road and boarding the car to return to Sapa. 

After breakfast at the hotel, the guide will drive you down a hillside road offering sweeping panoramas of undulating rice paddies running like treacle to the valley floor below. There are many ethnic minority-run stalls along the way where we can chat with people of the H’mong, Giay or Red Dao tribes. 

We take a side road towards Lao Chai village, exploring briefly before beginning our trek to Ta Van, home of the Giay hill tribe. We will be eating lunch at a local homestay with a member of the Giay group and their family, giving us the perfect opportunity to hear about the unique customs of the Giay people while enjoying local food in a traditional wooden house.

Waving goodbye to our friendly Giay host, we trek up and down over mild hills and through a bamboo forest. Relaxing at the waterfall here is a serene experience, so we will take few minutes of rest before moving on to the village of Giang Ta Chai, an enclave of the vibrant Red Dao minority. 

From here, the car will pick us up and take us back to Sapa, where you are free to enjoy the sites for the rest of the afternoon. Perhaps you would like to continue your trekking up the mild incline of the Ham Rong Mountain and around its gardens, or alternatively, take a walk around Sapa’s religious buildings, Mau Son Temple and Notre Dame Cathedral. 

After your final breakfast, the guide will take you through the cardamom gardens and tea plantations of Suoi Ho village. We walk along tracks used for transporting buffalo and arrive in Ma Tra village, stopping for photos before pressing on and having a picnic lunch at a scenic spot. 

We press on to the village of Ta Phin and its many Red Dao inhabitants. Take your last chance to get photos and souvenirs before we climb into the car and head directly to Lao Cai train station, where our guide will show you your night train back to Hanoi.

This concludes the Sapa Trekking  4 Day Tour with Train. We hope you enjoyed Sapa and will consider coming back with us at some point in the future!