There were about 13 of us who left together from Mama’s Naxi Guesthouse to the Tiger Leaping Gorge. This astounding piece of physical beauty has thankfully not yet been butchered by China’s various damming projects, but the government has it in its sights as a potential flooding zone years down the line. The road from Lijiang to the base of the hike is long and windy, taking about 3 hours. With such a large group, we were able to pay only 20 yuan, another great bonus that comes along with staying in a hostel with these kinds of services and coordinates otherwise independent travelers.
It’s a good idea to travel with a student ID card, no matter how long ago you were a student, because student discounts are surprisingly available and very substantial. Our entrance fee to hike the gorge was halved by our old college ID cards. We started on the hike, and it quickly separated into two groups: one including two Dutch men a little older than us and one British man maybe 5 years older than them. They were intent on making it back to Lijiang early enough on their second day to catch a flight to Chengdu that evening. Then there were the rest of us: two other Americans, one of which went to Tufts, a retired Australian couple, an Australian guy about our age, two Swedish girls our age, a pretty German grad-student we picked up along the hike, a Korean guy and girl (who we mistakenly thought were traveling together) and ourselves. We all hiked at different speeds and took different breaks, but continuously passed each other, had lunch together as a whole group, and ended up in the same guest house for the night.
The hike itself has two paths, one higher and one lower. The higher path is really the only one worth hiking, as the lower path is a dusty paved road which provides inferior views and is primarily taken up by vans busing travelers to different outposts where the higher and lower paths meet. We took the high path the whole two days. There is no need to descend in order to sleep for the night at a guesthouse, as the LP suggested, as there are convenient and hospitable guesthouses located at several locations along the path which you can’t miss.
The sun was out, and we were very quickly down to our lightest layers and applying the sunscreen. The hike was overall relatively easy, but there were sections which were very difficult. In the two days of hiking, there were about 2 hours or so late in the first day that were tremendously difficult, and the rest is able to be handled by most hikers. The difficult section was characterized by its 30+ steep zig-zags. The peak elevation reached was 2600 meters. The views were unbelievably breathtaking. It was the first time since the Great Wall that I wished for a super wide angle lens. There were gorgeous snowcapped peaks above us and across the gorge from us and the sky was clear blue. The melting water from which created some beautiful waterfall crossings for us the second day of the hike.
Since the books were proving to be quite inadequate for this hike in particular, we relied on the guidance provided by the maps printed out on printer paper for us by the hostel and the messages spray painted on the rocks along the hike. They showed you the correct path when it was ambiguous. We also got to witness some local competition and advertisement, as rocks would feature exaltations of a particular guest house and then greatly exaggerate the hike to the competing guest house with not-to-scale maps and exclamation points. The guest house we stayed at was called Tea Horse, as some bad reviews of the Halfway Guest House had found their way to our hiking party.
The facilities were good for its location. There was a hot shower, which was great when you were under the water but since it was so cold out it was still a shocking experience, so Liz says, because I skipped the shower that night. I instead added layers of under armor and wool as the night became the coldest one we’d experience. However, the room in the new building was extremely well insulated and comfortable despite its tiny size. There was also a more inexpensive old building to sleep in, but the view from anywhere on the property was astounding.
As things became dark we all moved into a room inside where we ordered a large meal from a long rickety wooden scroll-like menu and drank fully, Lizzie ordering a hot chocolate and myself sticking to Dali Beer. Things were warming up among us as we enjoyed a good meal in that small room with a big table. Joining us also was a Russian couple who lives in New Jersey. We played cards with our new friends late enough into the night that we didn’t get hiking until 9 or 10AM the next day.
We got recommendations we wouldn’t expect from people. Apparently the overland route into China via train through Russia is very popular for Europeans in the group, and an Australian named Gavin recommended backpacking Pakistan for a (crazily) safe good time on a low budget. The crowd made me feel like a bit more of a novice traveler than I previously considered myself, but only by a little. We were able to dish out some helpful tips about Yangshuo, as most people were taking the more logical north-to-south fall-in-China route. It was valuable to hang out with people who were on year-long (or longer) backpacking trips or who had just pitched their tent through Pakistan on their way to China. They were doing some pretty incredible things and they were almost all my age or only slightly older. Everyone except for the grad student and the retirees seemed to be in China because, like me, they didn’t have firm career directions at home.
Our second day began relatively late, but we had a pretty easy hike ahead of us. We packed ourselves up, ate some apple crepes and egg and tomato, and took pictures of the 15 foot cannabis plant located adjacent to the Tea Horse guest house (do we now know what kind of tea it was?). The most notable features of the second day’s hike were the waterfalls.
As a group we negotiated affordable transport back to Lijiang from Tina’s Guest House. To make the trip last a third day, one could hike down to the river’s edge where there are apparently some impressive rapids and, of course, the location where the a tiger allegedly leapt across the gorge. Instead, we slept at Mama’s for one more cold night, heading off to the girl kingdom the next day. The Australian retirees warned us that they had heard form other travelers that the road to Lugu Hu is dangerous enough to skip the destination entirely and fly to Sichuan Province. We decided we’d play it based on the weather, and it was as clear a day as we could hope for the next morning as we got on a small minibus to head to the lake.
