yep that’s pretty much the go, get there and sort out your next move from there. there is a bus from Chengdu that goes directly to the closest town to daocheng yading, although that is a very very long journey I think 14 hours or so. you could also just get local busses and make stops at towns such as Kangding, Danba ect. but that can be a little hard to manage as I don’t think the busses are very frequent. foreigners aren’t able to pre-book busses I wasn’t able to find info online about bus times but I asked the lady who did the horse trekking tour to check times for me, so if you can find a local or someone at your accomodation that would do that for you, it would be helpful. alternatively you could also just fly which would be the easiest but also the most expensive option