Life in Cambodia

Tiger Leaping Gorge

After a bit of a scare, meaning all that I had been waiting for in Yunnan Province: hiking 'Tiger Leaping Gorge', 2 hours outside of Lijiang, the 3rd largest (we also heard 1st largest!) gorge in the world, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, about 2 vertical miles with the winding Yangtze River below and the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in the sky, I was told 'the hike is closed due to landslides'. Ugh. No way!? I had seen Matt's pictures, talked with friends, looked it up online, in the guidebooks and chatted other travelers up about this place and now I had come all this way to have it cut off by landslides...oh, no, not gonna' happen. We decided the folks in Lijiang couldn't be believed, which we learned was right--the gorge was open, the upper path, just for hikers was welcoming; the bottom road for cars was the one closed. Excellent. We got our bus tickets, left our big packs at the guesthouse and hit the road. Although, before actually hitting the road by bus, we had to take care of a nasty in-grown toenail infection of mine--I'll leave the details at that, but let me just tell you that the medical facilities in Lijiang are lacking...we first tried a local clinic in the old town--we waited for the doctor (who was eating breakfast) in his 'office/operating room' where the table was covered in newspaper, cigarettes, medical scissors, cotton, tea cups and a plastic bag of morning warm bread. Hmm. We also noticed the newspaper was a frightening rust color...use your imagination. A single wooden leg rest (ahem, chopping block) was standing in the middle of the room, looking just as uh, stained. The doctor came in and lunged at me with some utensils and Q-tips and I called it quits, we quickly hit the road for the main hospital. This experience was a little better, however, no less stomach turning (I didn't need the winding roads for that, I had the 'surgery room' where they took me to wait and eventually have my toe cleaned, however, I was a bit nervous given the open bucket next to me...I'll spare the details, I'm sure you can imagine; plus the ever present latrine-is-right-next-door-down-wind smell coming through the open windows. Ok, so in the end it worked out, they cleaned me up (as I inspected each cotton swab and tool they picked up and made them keep the alcohol and iodine solutions close, use those rubber gloves!). Enough about that...we made it to the bus station around 10:30 and were on the next bus to the little town of Qiaotou to start our trek.

Matt claimed that the hike was 'easy, mostly flat, with a few steep points only'--ha! We started uphill, of course, I expected this as we were going to reach 2,000-some meters, but nothing quite prepared us for the '28 Bends'! 28 steep, rock-strewn switches back and forth for a good 2.5 hours. Despite the difficulty of the hike in some parts, the views were breath-taking, black, jagged mountains with snow tops across the Yangtze and rolling grass covered mountains where we were hiking across waterfalls, reaching for our lives and spotting billy goats meters above us, only noticed by their ‘bleats’ every so often and their shepherd approaching us from the trail…I was beat. The first night, only after a short 2 hour hike, we made it to the Naxi Family Guesthouse, which was quite welcoming. The mom of the house was used to so many travelers charging through her house, she seemed to not mind our muddy shoes, smelly feet and tired looks. She took us all in, cooked up a good dinner, had cold beers on hand and waved us off the next morning, walking us down part of the trail to make sure we took the correct turn--not only for us, for all of the travelers! We hiked a good 6-7 hours the second day and amidst the rain made it down to Sean's Guesthouse in Walnut Grove, the last little town of the gorge. Sean greeted us with excitement and shared some stories from his 26-odd years owning a guesthouse here...lots of stories to be told. He was the first to start taking hikers through the gorge in 1996, through landslides and government disputes (they are threatening to build a dam in the gorge) he's been through it all and still fighting (you might be able to check out www.tigerleapinggorge.com which I think is his site...we can't access it as China has blocked this website, including our blog). We met a bunch of other hikers from Michigan (!), the UK, Israel and Korea and enjoyed beers and chatting into the night, resting our tired bodies. The next morning we latched on to a tour group to help us get through the landslides on the road back--3 total, which took out good chunks of the road and was a bit treacherous climbing over huge boulders that were just dislodged from their 1000+ year dwellings and could tumble again at any moment...yes there were no railings left on the road from the slides and it was just you staring down at the gorge trying to get over the mounds of rock and dirt from the slides...anyway, Matt got some good shots of this and if not posted yet, will be soon. Once over the landslide area, and back in the small town where we started, we headed back to Lijiang for one more night and to flee to Sichuan for some good hot and spicy food and more hiking. More soon!

posted by Life in Cambodia @ 8:07 PM