Tiger Leaping Gorge
Trip Start
Oct 20, 2008
1
14
15
Trip End
Oct 20, 2009
Tiger Leaping Gorge,
Yunnan,
China
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Bai ladies
Our first destination was the ancient walled town of Dali where little old ladies dressed in traditional 'Bai' dress offer cannabis on the clean, picturesque streets and, under the shadow of bellowing 4000m mountains, you could take a ride on a huge ram.
new roads, no cars
Dali
We toured the surrounding farming communities on bikes & the next day sat through a bumpy 5-hour drive to the Tiger Leaping Gorge, keen to walk towards the mountains again. Never fully sure if your ever on the right bus you quickly learn to just accept whatever fate comes your way & despite thinking we’d past our stop & were on our way to Siberia the driver pulled up in the middle of nowhere nodding furiously at our furious pointing on the map.
Tiger Leaping Gorge
Ready to rest our weary heads before our 3-day trek we looked around the deserted village for a guesthouse. Out of nowhere an Australian called Margo popped out of a café & told us to leave our big packs with her to forward on & start on the trail to the next guesthouse. She insisted that it would be raining in the morning & we could easily complete the 2-hour trek to the next village before sundown. Though mentally & physically unprepared we trusted her judgement & off we trudged in the late afternoon with 2 vague, hand-drawn maps.
Trying to follow the map we turned left up a steep track following a scruffy local. The steep path wound through beautiful smelling pines, a crystal clear valley of deep green opening out before us – the finishing post of the Himalayas. The local turned & spoke to us in Chinese. We helpfully spoke back in English & whether he wanted money for guiding us, to take us home to his family or the recipe for curried crab cakes we’ll never know. If only we’d understood…
Lost in Translation
Within an hour we had reached a village & looked for the guesthouse. The path we had been following split into 3 ways & with no help from the maps or babbling villagers who all pointed in different directions we were becoming totally lost. We continued circling the village following trails up & down & round & over mistakenly following a pointed finger through some house gates & into (and straight out of) a courtyard of uniformed men & a rabid chained dog. One of the soldiers walked with us to a point on the edge of a dense pine forest & gestured to go straight through it. Now with no path & moving away from the village we were getting perplexed & slightly worried with the sun dipping behind the opposite valley. Out of the forest we reached a road going up/down the hill & a separate footpath sweeping round the mountain. The light was fading fast. Where were we?!
Not wanting to leave the safety of the village we followed the road back down now miles from the official path. Out of nowhere a man poked his head up out of a bush & spoke enough English to show us how far off the trail we were. The village was not THE village & we were a further hour and half away from where we wanted to be. He walked with us to a clearing & pointed out the way saying the guesthouse was round the next mountain. Now quite gloomy & with a hint of desperation creeping in we followed his pointed finger away from civilisation & onto a precarious mountain pass. I frantically tried to recall some Ray Mears techniques about how we could survive the night out in the open. Mountains closed their faces to the impending darkness as we continued through a shady forest & around the mountain. After an hour and a half we saw lights of a village ahead of us & ran through the surrounding stepped rice fields like something out of Platoon……….
The Naxi family guesthouse welcomed us with green tea as we relayed our story to Luigi Semoli – not a swarve, 6ft Roman but a funny Manc as Italian as a newspaper of fish & chips - & a jolly, forthright forty-something German called Wolfgang. Green tea turned into Dali beers and we chatted into the night.
Tiger Leaping Gorge
The next morning we waited for the sun to blind us as it ‘crescendo’d’ over the snow peaks, crowning them in pure light and set off on our 3-day trek alone.
Tiger Leaping Gorge
TLG
At 2670m, we walked halfway up one tight valley wall, the sheer drop cutting down to a fast-flowing emerald river where tiny specks of tourists gathered oblivious to the magnificent scene above and below us.
back a bit....
On the clear days we could follow veins of snow on the tops of the mountains opposite down through bare rock to lush greenery then down to the river. The last day’s walk around waterfalls was whipped in cloud changing the atmosphere to a beautiful shadowy bleakness.
TLG
waterfall
Our last guesthouse on the trek claimed to have the ‘best toilets on Earth and in the Heavens’. A mighty claim and after gaining certain expertise in the standard of latrines since being away (though only on Earth) I made my assessment. On first look it seemed pretty bog standard (haw haw) with the straddle & squat technique (not the best conditions to make you want to linger) but with only the sides covered the rest of the toilet was completely exposed looking out over the entire expanse valley. How liberating!
TLG
At the end of the trek we found the (un)likely lads (Luigi & Wolfgang) having a beer and decided to ride with them to Shangri-La. The journey was spectacular - mountains giving way to huge wide plains (still at 3200m) with Luigi making us laugh as he continuously agonised over deleting photos on his SIM card from the trek so he could take more of the views before him.
Shangri-La
In the bitterly cold Shangri-La (tourist name for Ziongdian) we rode horses on the grassland plains, walked through thousands of colourful prayer flags atop monasteries and ate dinners with the German & the Gerbil.
Shangri-La Prayer Flags
We were on the edges of Tibetan culture and wanted to see more but with the visas for Tibet extortionate and the mountain passes only just re-opened for foreigners we planned a route along the Chinese side of the Tibetan border despite warnings it would be hard…….
another walk...
