Tiger Leaping Gorge, China
Trip Start
Feb 28, 2008
1
15
18
Trip End
Jul 06, 2008
Qiaotou,
China
Friday, April 18, 2008
Thursday 17th April
I got up and waited outside the front of Frosty Morning at 8.45 like I was told. Guess what? The bloody minibus didn't turn up! I waited until 9.45 before I gave up and left. By this point I had already missed the two morning buses to Qiaotou from the main bus station. I went for breakfast just around the corner at an Italian restaurant, Bon Appetite, run by a gorgeous Chinese lady. Just after I had ordered Hsiaoping walked past so I shouted out to her. She rang Mama to find out what had happened. It turns out that no-one from her guesthouse had wanted to go to Qiaotou that day so she had decided to cancel the bus and forgot to tell Hsiaoping! The owner of Bon Appetite rang the bus station for me and found out that I could get a bus heading to Zhongdien in the afternoon and it would drop me off on the way. The minibus palava meant that I wouldn't be able to start walking until the following morning which really put a strain on my already tight schedule for my remaining 11 days in China. I managed to get on a bus at 12.40 thanks to the lady who wrote what ticket I wanted to buy in Chinese for me. I was sat next to a lady who kept on offering me food. No matter how many times I said: "No thank you", she still held it out in her hand until I took it! There were a few squeaky bum moments (to use a footballing term!) as we hurtled down some winding mountain roads which had no barriers to stop us falling at least 500ft to our deaths. A bone-rattling 3 hours later I arrived in Qiaotou. A couple of minutes up the road was Jane's Guesthouse where I decided to base myself for the night. I got a single room for 2 pounds that only had a double bed in it - nothing else! After an hour of lounging around on the sofa upstairs two girls arrived who had been hiking the gorge. After a couple minutes of debating whether I knew them or not I realised that I had seen them in the Hump in Kunming. They had arrived late on our second day there and were standing looking lost so I showed them where to check in. That had been our only interaction though. After saying hello they told me that they had recognised me from the Hump as well. They were Felicia and Sofia from Sweden. I ended up dinner with them and then chatting and drinking beer until midnight which would later prove to be a mistake!
Friday 18th April
The girls came to wake me up at 8am and I immediately regretted how much I had drank last night! After eating my breakfast and putting my bag in the storage room I set off to start my hike with a stonking hangover at 9am. The first two hours weren't too hard going and the path took me to the Naxi Family Guesthouse. I was greeted by a Chinese lady who ushered me to a table covered with food, drinks and a big bag labled 'Ganja Marijuana'. After buying a Snickers bar - my first chocolate since Bangkok - and explaining to the lady that getting stoned probably wouldn't help me complete the toughest part of the walk, which was coming up next, I set off to tackle the 28 Bends. It took me an hour to get up the brutal, steep winding path to the highest part of the trek - 2670m above sea level. At the top I was greeted by a crazy, singing Chinese man who took me to the viewpoint where he positioned me all over the place so that he could take some pictures with my camera for me. It was an amazing sight but I was crapping myself the entire time due to the sheer one mile drop down into the Yangtze river below all around me. After decending for half an hour I stopped at the Tea Horse Guesthouse for a drink. It seemed like a nice place to stay for the night but as it was only 12.30 I figured that I would probably get bored really quickly so I decided to carry on walking. The rest of the walk was not too strenuous. I kept finding myself stopping and saying 'wow' because of the amazing views. I had a couple of ropey moments where I slipped and almost fell to my death, but at 4.40pm after 7 hours and 40 minutes of walking with a hangover I got to the end of the high path and stopped for a drink and some food. Another 30 minutes of walking took me to Walnut Grove and Sean's Guesthouse where I decided to stay for the night. I sat down on the terrace to have a well deserved beer, had a shower and at 7pm decided to lay on my bed to watch TV. I must have only been watching TV for a couple of minutes before I fell asleep!
Saturday 19th April
I woke up at 8.30 and went for breakfast which I ate whilst being harrassed by the guesthouse cat, which wouldn't get off my lap, and small puppy, which kept on biting my toes! I packed up my things and about an hour later I flagged down a minivan to give me a lift back to Jane's. The hour long journey was the most scared I have ever been. The entire road was covered with landslides from the mountains which most of the time just left us enough room to squeeze through with a few inches to spare. Quite often the minivan would slide out on the landslides leaving us perilously close to falling a mile off the cliff into the river. I arrived back at 11.15 to find that the buses back to Lijiang left at 11.30 and 2.30 so I quickly grabbed my bag and ran to the bus stop. I made it in time thanks to a convoy of 39 Chinese troop carrier vehicles that were driving along the main road, holding all the other vehicles up. The bus ride back was pretty bumpy and at one point I flew at least a foot off my seat! I got back to Lijiang at about 3pm and got a taxi straight to Frosty Morning to let them all know that I had gone through with it... in one day... with a hangover! Hsiaoping helped me plan my travel to Xi'an for the following day by writing me a series of notes in Chinese that would help me buy my bus and train tickets and explain where I needed to go to the taxi driver. I was there for about an hour chatting and eating some of Hsiaoping's amazing food when who should walk in? Koen and Tom! Unbelieveable! They were as suprised to see me as I was to see them. They assumed that I would have left to hike the Gorge. I explained that I had done it already. I ended up staying until midnight playing pool and darts with the guys and a couple of annoying English guys, James and Chris and a nice Mauritian couple, Angelique and Dimitri, with a brief interuption to go to find somewhere to live for the night. I ended up back at the same place that I had stayed before.
