Leaping Tiger, Jade Dragon, Slack Arsed Horse
Trip Start
May 07, 2003
1
49
65
Trip End
Sep 05, 2005
Shangri-La,
China
Monday, July 11, 2005
With Chris off to Hong Kong (he got his Ruski visa in a single day without a single problem) China was looking a bit daunting on my own, but luckily Sophie, the lovely young lady I met in Nha Trang, had also had enough of Shithole; so she quit her bar manager job in Guava and joined me for a nosy round China! The first thing which shocks you about this country is that there's hardly a trace of English. Not even a roman letter to be seen in most places. Everything is in the attractive but incomprehensible pictorial script of Mandarin; or one of the half dozen other languages here
01 Waterweel in Lijang
. Almost no-one speaks passable English. It's a serious challenge, but I'm loving it! We'd be royally fucked without our LP and phrase book though, and have already had to pick up a few basic phrases. The language is surprisingly logic and not as hard as you might have imagined. The pronounciation however is a nightmare and (just like English) changes from place to place.During two days overlanding it thru the Chinese countryside, we passed high-rise cities sprung up out of nowhere in the mountains, dozens of brickworks, factories, powerstations, endless herculean constructions of new roads, dams (on all the rivers), bridges, the countryside often scared by open quarries and mines. The amount of development going on here has to be seen to be believed. Every single patch of land not built on is farmed on. Even the tops of the more accessible mountains are used to provide food for the country's ballooning population - at last count 1.4 billion! You wonder whether mother earth can stand such an onslaught - all the roads we've been on have had landslides and rockfalls. Sometimes the road itself is falling away down the steep hillsides.
After that mammoth journey, which looks like a puny scrap of land on the map compared to what we have to do to get to Beijing, we arrived in the picturesque town of Lijang on the edge of Tibet. It still retains beautiful Naxi architecture and has almost survived the breaker ball development of the Han Chinese and a walk round the winding cobbled streets and over the trickeling network of canals really feels like a step back in time
02 Gorgeous backstreets of Lijang have survived...
. From there we made for Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the deepest, narrowest, most incredible gorges in the world. We trekked for hours along the perilous path at the top of the abyss, at times hewn out of the sheer rockface, with 1000-1500m drops by the side of the 3 foot wide track, stopping every ten minutes, gazing with jaws hanging at the unbeleivable Himalayan scenery. You have to stop, otherwise you'd fall off! Two people were killed on this walk the other week. Twelve in the previous year. Surprisingly however, there were very few other walkers on the track, at times we spent hours without seeing anyone.
The majestic 5500m Jade Dragon Snow mountain, from the surface of the river to the summit rises 4000m. It's like a monolithic wall of ashen rock, almost completely vertical. So we caught two of the most unspeakably flatulent horses you've ever heard of, who anally propelled us up the most difficult section of the path and with aching bones and buggered knees, we thankfully arrived at the most amazing guest house in the world. For $2 a night we had a room with a view like I've never seen. The sky was almost completely obscured from the window, all we could see was sheer rockface a mile away across the gorge. All we could hear was the clinking of goat bells, the distant roar of the Yangzi river and the odd parp from a nearby horse! We ate delicious local Naxi cuisine and drank mountain tea from huge stone tables, served by the warm Naxi people who still live and farm along the gorge side as they have done for millenia
03 Gorgeous backstreets of Lijang
. The Chinese in their usual style have blasted two roads out of the rockface and according to a local Tibetan guesthouse owner: there are also are secret plans to dam the gorge and flood the whole area. This would mean the loss of one of the worlds greatest natural wonders and the demise of the Naxi people living on it's edge - you'd better hurry if you want to check it out!Currently, we're on the border of Tibet, in a town called Shangri-La (yes it's real name - I finally found it!). It's feckin' pissin' doon tho and is bloody freezing so we're stuck inside warming by the stove, chowing down on tasty Yak meat and drinking wonderful Yunnan coffee with those smiling rosy-cheeked Tibetan folks.
Because of the fact the Shitholese and the Ruski's wasted our time and souls away so ruthlessly, (no, it wasn't anything to do with our extreme laziness or complete lack of planning ;)) we're now sacrificing most of China and all of Tibet to a dogs life of endless bus journeys and long hauling our asses up to Beijing for the big trip to Mongolia. Finally we have a ticket! Leaving Beijing 25th July. The first time since I arrived in NZ all those months (years?) ago that I've had a date confining my worldly desires! We know for sure we'll be back in Europe by at least 24th Aug as that's when the Red's visa expires - see you then!
