Warsaw to Bangkok

A couple hours north of Lijiang is the Tiger Leaping Gorge. At 16km in length and 3.9km in depth, it is one of the most spectacular pieces of landscape I’ve ever seen. The river is none other than the Yangtze, in its wild, mountainous youth. Unlike those other famous Yangtze gorges I cruised through some weeks ago, Tiger Leaping Gorge is most assuredly not navigable. Four men tried to take a raft through it in 1983 and none made it out alive. Nobody’s put a boat in there since.

The gorge trek begins in the town of Qiaotou. Though two days for the trip is normal, we (three of us) decided to take our sweet time. Like a lot of folks, we arrived in Qiaotou in the afternoon and made the hard 90-minute uphill slog to the Naxi Family Guesthouse. This is not a North American-style hike, but rather a hike built right into the community, based around an ancient footpath. There is a high trail, and a road below (which used to be the low trail). More on that later.

You start in a schoolyard, walking past kids playing basketball and soccer, and even a few studying. Oh, and smack in the middle of the schoolyard is a gigantic marijuana plant. That plant would have a very short shelf-life in most schoolyards, but in this part of Yunnan it grows wild and in distinct profusion, so it failed to attract much interest.

From the school the path heads up the hill, overlooking on the right the junction of the small river that feeds Qiaotou and the Yangtze. The path turns left, revealing the towering peaks on the south side of the gorge, topped by the jagged, snow-capped Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. The name indicates great reverance as jade is the most valuable stone, dragon the most majestic creature and mountains of course are the most powerful physical thing in the world.

The Naxi Family Guesthouse is set in a hillside hamlet amid fields of corn. The entire inner courtyard was covered in drying corn husks. The family are very hospitable, the prices rock bottom and the food exquisite. I was still feeling the effects of sitting behind the world’s most prolific chain smoker on the ride up and had to turn in early.

Stage Two
The next day was a lazy start spent lounging in the sun. As we were beginning to saddle up around 11, some Germans came in, full of boast about having arrived from the Halfway Guesthouse in two hours and fifty minutes. Yippedy-do. We took six hours to make the same journey. Why? Because it was beautiful! Why come to spectacular, remote corners of the world just to race through them?

Leaving the Naxi Guesthouse, you come to the infamous 28 Bends, a brutal winding path straight up the hill. The sun beat down and I wasted little time putting on my Darth Vader mask. We took around two hours just to get to the top and were completely beat. But the views were excellent, as we could finally see down the gorge a bit. The wall of rockon the south side still confronted us.

The path offered many stunning views. At one point, in cruises through an idyllic pine forest, where cracks in the treeline offered views of surging rapids far below. Across the gorge, just above the river, a parking lot was filled with tour buses. I thought North Americans were lazy until I saw Chinese tourists. Exercise is not considered a form of recreation in China. Much time has been spent of late mocking the tour groups and their colour-coded headgear. They often wear business suits on vacation, too. I suppose this is to impress but it’s hardly my idea of unwinding. Then again, going to a resort in the Caribbean and frying by the poolside is hardly my idea of unwinding either.

Stage Three
Near the end of the day’s walk, we arrived at a waterfall. We could see that as nice as it was, a postcard falls was in a grotto partially hidden by a giant rock. A goat path led down and we followed the stream to the twenty-foot waterfall. It was the archetypal “paradise” waterfall that leaves unsuspecting couples no choice but to fall madly in love as they stand under it. Just guys here, though, so we skipped that part of the program and continued to the Halfway Guesthouse.

This is known for its top-flight food and jaw-dropping views from the toilets. It delivered on both accounts, though we could have done without the snippy, cocky teenage servers and lack of anywhere free of draft to warm up.

The last day we headed out with the intent of climbing up to “The Big Waterfall” and bamboo forest before heading into Walnut Grove, the final stop. However, we found ourselves descending instead. Apparently that upper path is not marked. Through sunburnt meadows and past goatherds’ huts we walked until we met with the low (paved) road. From here we crossed a bridge 70m over a stream that had itself plunged from even greater heights shortly before. Eager to get off the dull pavement, we took the opportunity to climb down several hundred metres to the river at the “middle rapids”. This path is perilously steep and necessitates at some points the use of ladders. I hate ladders. One was 25m high, twisty, and loose at the bottom. Another required boarding while lying on my stomach, with a left-foot lead. That was not cool.

At this point, the river is a seething, frothing, rabid wolf. Enormous boulders break the river up both at and under the surface. You can climb onto these right out into the middle of the river, though I wisely stayed off the wet rocks. The water rushes through the rocks with incredible speed and power. Surges as high as twenty feet crashed over the rocks in places. I don’t think I’ve seen a body of water with so much power, not even at Peggy’s Cove.

The hike from here could either be back the way we came (straight up) or along a spectacular, treacherous alternate route that was literally carved out of the cliffside.

This route takes you up through bamboo groves to a path chisled from a sheer rock face. You literally go through the cliffside. At parts the path is little more than a foot wide, with nothing but certain death if you make a mistake. There are sections washed out by waterfalls, sections consisting of nothing but scree, and finally a cave.

Beyond the cave, bends in the cliffside offer unparalleled vistas of the entire gorge. High up above the middle rapids, an outcropping reaches out to the other side. This is Tiger Leaping Stone, from which the tiger is said to have jumped a couple hundred feet to the other side.

You then come to a hut where a goatherd lives. He has a pool, built by hand and fed with mountain water. It is shallow and must be quite warm in summer. There is a stone seat and a few fish. It has views of the entire gorge and surrounding mountains.

Beyond the pool, the path winds through meadows, then cornfields and past the largest cactus I’ve ever seen (a massive, twisted tree with delicious fruit), then by a shy pig and a baby goat before heading up to Walnut Grove.

Finale
The next morning, we took a minivan along the road to Qiaotou. A shining example of Chinese hubris, this is The Road That Should Not Be. Blasted out of the mountainside, this road features rockslides every hundred metres or so. At one point, the road was one lane wide, the other lane being at the bottom of the Yangtze after the earth collapsed underneath of it. A massive rockslide bisects the road and we disembarked to scramble over it to our onward transport. An Australian girl who’d passed through the previous day pointed out all the giant stones that were newly fallen onto the asphalt. The rock face was riddled with cracks and fissures and not one bit of it looked remotely stable. We did not linger.

We went our seperate ways and I returned to Lijiang to begin my journey southward to Laos.