My driver escorted me to the van and luckily I was joined by 3 other people: Gemma, a British photographer studying Chinese; Echo, a Chinese hostel volunteer ; and her brother, I'll call him Echo Bro because I could neither pronounce nor remember his actual name. The four of us would be doing a self-guided trek of the majestic Tiger Leaping Gorge.
Tiger Leaping Gorge is one of the deepest gorges in the world. It is 16km long and is 3900m from the Jinsha river below to the highest point of the snow-capped Haba mountains.
We would be following the higher route, which winds over 1000m above the river and provides spectacular views of the mountains across the gorge.
Our van dropped us off at the starting point and we got a beautiful panorama of Qiaotou and the Jinsha river. We continued along the dusty path, stopping frequently to take pictures along the way.
Gemma quickly revolutionized the way I take daytime photos in bright sunlight by teaching me about exposure compensation. I am forever in her photographic debt.
The hike was surprisingly straight-forward and well-signed. There were some inclines but most were gradual and intermittent.
We snuck past a haphazardly barricaded lookout point to get some breathtaking and iconic views of this natural wonder.
We soon reached the quaint village of Nuoyu and then the most challenging part of the hike began. This portion is known as '28 bends'. We stopped a few times on the way for water breaks and turning down old women offering us marijuana.
After finishing the 28 bends, the path flattened out and actually started descending. We continued along the path, admiring the Chinese rural life unfolding around us.
After walking for longer than expected, we finally reached Bendiwan village, home to our guesthouse for the night, the beautifully crafted and aptly named half-way guesthouse.
What was refreshing and almost unheard of in touristic China was that we didn't pass any Chinese tourists the entire day. I guess the fact that there was no chairlift and they would have to walk all day is a clear deterrent.
That evening we enjoyed some beers, good food and laughs with some of the other tourists who arrived at halfway shortly after we did.
Gemma had been studying mandarin and she blew me away with her ability to converse with some of the Chinese who joined us at our table.
In the morning, we got an early start towards our next check point, Tina's guesthouse.
We took a brief pause to admire the sun peaking above Yulong Xueshan before continuing on our way.
The trek to Tina's was easy going and mostly downhill. It only took us an hour-and-a-half to make it there.
From there we walked towards walnut garden and descended towards the river. The path here was a bit more treacherous but gave us an indication of the power of the Jinsha river.
We had to pay a series of trivial local tolls before we arrived at Tiger Leaping Stone, where a tiger is said to have jumped across the Yangtze, giving the gorge its name.
One of the tolls gained us access to a sky ladder which was a vertical climb of around 30m.
Quite scary!
After this point it was a pretty steep ascent along a set of dubious stairs cut into the rock (damn stairs, can't avoid you!).
We returned to Tina's guesthouse and caught a bus back to Lijiang.
Upon our arrival, I was surprised to see David and Camille were staying at the same hostel. They joined Gemma, Echo and Echo Bro and I for dinner.
Even more coincidently was that two other Montrealers were staying at the Garden Inn and one was a Physiotherapist who knew and worked with some of my good friends from university.
Small world indeed!
No comments:
Post a Comment