Tiger Leaping Gorge - Day 1
After being reassured by our tour guide yesterday that the track is open (despite a lot of mixed messages online), we are up early and with a belly full of aunty's breakfast we are off to tackle the 2-day Tiger Leaping Gorge track.
Andy picks us up and we are heading to the actual scenic spot first, where everyone comes to see the power of the Jinsha/Yangtze river as it bashes its way through the gorge.
We buy our tickets, get a short shuttle bus (always a shuttle bus) and start descending the steep steps to the river. It's a decent drop to get there and the river gets louder and louder as we go. We take the obligatory pictures and Courtney gets a surprisingly good coffee and we decide to get the set of escalators (for a price...) back up to save our legs for the hike.
We jump back in the car and head up to Naxi Family Guesthouse, the starting point of the hike. Not that you would know. There aren't really any signs that we could see.
We never really got to the bottom of why the websites said the High Trail route was closed. We think there is some stuff that's lost in translation. This is an "undeveloped area", meaning not an official tourist attraction. And compared with everything else we've done in China, it shows. No tickets, no passports, no security, no signage.
And that's what makes this so great! It's just us, Andy and a few pack mules and little shacks selling snacks and drinks to guide us.
Someone later mentioned they got a Didi from Lijiang to Naxi Guesthouse for about $40-50.
We set off at 12:30 and we only spot one other person on the track for the first hour. We grab a quick Snickers from a shack at the start of the 28 Bends - the tough incline of day 1 with switch-backs cutting a path into the side of the mountain to clock up the elevation. Jeff counts backwards from 28 in Mandarin to take his mind off the pain. He ends at -1...
We get to the top and this is the highest part of the hike - 2670 meters above sea level. Getting the heart rate down after that set was not easy. The views are starting to ramp up now. Likewise the sketchiness of the bits of infrastructure to stop you falling down the mountain.
From here it's relatively flat and a bit down to where we are staying the night. We start to enjoy ourselves more now the hard work is done. The views get better and better. We spot some goats and an unidentifiable bird that looked a bit like a lyre bird. We pass a Brazillian couple, speak briefly to some Americans at a snack shack, but other than that it was just us on the track. Very rare. We picked a good time to come.
The track is pretty varied in terms of difficultly and trickiness underfoot and there are many spots where a wrong step will result in a quick trip into the river about 1000m below us. Hiking boots would have been good, but we managed OK in our runners (packing light, carry-on only, heros etc.)
We weren't expecting Andy to be on the hike with us. But it's great because he sets a good pace for us, not too fast or slow, knowing how long it will take us to get to our destination. And we get to chat all day.
Jeff asks if he is old enough to remember the Lijiang earthquake in 1996. He does. And he remembers spending 3 years of schooling in a tent while they rebuilt the school.
Before we know it the forest we're walking in is coming to an end, the goat welcoming committee is bleating at us and we can see our accommodation for the night. We're staying at Tiger Leaping Gorge Tea Horse Guest House. It's the one with the amazing rooftop area for mountain watching and we are pumped!
We had to book this place last night after realising the other place we had booked was nowhere near the half-way point of the 2-day hike. Tea Horse is in Yacha Village. The other common options is the Halfway Guesthouse at the next village along. The room at Tea Horse was the last one available and cost $45. If it has a bed and shower, all good.
We pick up the keys to a padlock and get directed to "The Stables" a group of 6 rooms, 3 on top of 3. The room has 3 single beds and a shower and toilet. It'll do.
We shower and head straight back up to the viewing rooftop, where there is also a bar/cafe. We buy two well earned beers and watch the mountain for a while. The sun is still shining on it, but we are in the shadows of the mountain behind us now. It's getting cold fast, but we are in no hurry to get up.
Eventually we head downstairs to the little restaurant. We order 3 dishes, one of them is stir fry yak - not bad, just like a gamey beef.
We head back up to the view. Chat with some other hikers and then call it a night. We are getting cold now the sun has completely gone. It's 0 degrees.
We head to the stable and get into bed, electric blanket on, thick blankets on. Overdid it a bit. An hour later we are stripping layers and have realised we hardly drank any water since the hike ended. Rookie mistake. We sleep horribly considering how gassed we are, but tomorrow is much easier going in theory.
