Tiger Leaping Gorge

In the morning, we found out that seven other people from the Panba Hostel were also going to the gorge that day. A large van came to pick us all up at 8:30 am, and the ride would take somewhere between two and three hours. The rest of the passengers were all young college-age students or serious world travelers. We all struck up interesting conversations, but it was clear that everyone on the van had been to many foreign countries and most liked to do unusual things. One couple was traveling around the world, and the guy was going to mountain climb in the Annapurna mountains…basically, the poor-man’s Everest, although you leave from the same base camp. He also talked about the time he bought a motorcycle and rode around Vietnam for several months, wiping out five times. Others had been to Mongolia and regaled us with tales of yurts, horses, and horrible food--mutton and camel meat. The four students were studying Chinese in Beijing and had taken off for National Week. Their stories included riding the night train in the sleeper seats, surrounded by the rural poor Chinese men, who would ask them questions like, “Do you have anything valuable with you?” The students slept in shifts and told us that they were stared at for about 24 hours, while any activity they did--like taking out contacts--was scrutinized very carefully. By the second day of travel, the novelty had worn off and they were left alone. The students were American, but the rest of the travelers were European.

At about 11:00, we made it to the start off point of the gorge trek, a tiny dirt trail that snaked off from the main road. The only way that you would have noticed it, is that someone had unobtrusively painted the words, Tiger Leaping Gorge with an arrow on the side of a wall next to the trail. The four students stayed in the van--they were going to ride to the end of the trail to Tina’s Guesthouse--while the rest of us were going to start here, from Qiaotou.


For some reason, although I research travel things pretty well, I somehow just ignore the specifics of hikes of this nature. Nick had given me a small hand-drawn map of what the trek was supposed to entail--a hike of seven to nine hours, with the first section a steady uphill climb, followed by a strenuous section called the 24 Bends, and then a long mostly even or slightly downhill grade, ending with a steeper downhill section to Tina’s Guesthouse. I didn’t even know how many kilometers the hike was, as the map only detailed how much time each section should take to hike. Compounding that, some guidebooks rated the trek as “very strenuous” and some intimated that it was no big deal. It was hard to get a read on the whole thing.

Meanwhile, there were supposed to be guesthouses all along the trail--places where you could stay overnight. Even though you were supposed to be able to walk the entire trek in one day, Nick said that most people stopped somewhere and stayed overnight. From Tina’s, you could catch a van back to Lijiang at 4 pm the next day.

So, armed with a few clothes, cameras, a water bottle, snacks, the map, two umbrellas, and a wallet, we headed off into the gorge. The other world travelers quickly outpaced us, as I knew they would. We were basically wandering around on a little trail through the countryside, passing very poor, rural Chinese farms with outhouses, farm animals, and subsistence crops. However, the farms themselves were usually pretty neatly kept, with nice, sometimes new, buildings. It was the beginning of harvest, and all of the homes had deep yellow corncobs out to dry, some hanging thickly on racks, some covering the floor of a loft under the eaves. All of the fields seemed well-maintained, and many of the farmers and their families were out working.

As we walked, we would frequently come to some kind of crossroads, and the trail was not marked in any way. At some point, a Chinese man with a horse started directing us, waving us onto the right trail. After about 20 minutes, he ended up right behind\ us. I tried to let him pass, but Kinsey muttered, “He’s following us!” and indeed he was. He didn’t really say much, but his horse had a bell on its harness, which jingled constantly and drove Kinsey mad.


“I wish he’d leave us alone,” she said.


But I replied that it was a public road, and there wasn’t really anything I could do to stop him from using it. I realized that he was following us because he thought we might eventually want to ride the horse up the difficult parts. Apparently we looked like we wouldn’t make it. Since I had no real idea of what lay ahead, I figured it wasn’t such a bad idea for him to follow. I wasn’t going to rule out anything.


For quite sometime, the climb was uphill but not difficult. Then, at parts, it started to get rocky and parts were steep. The day was cool, but I was sweating nonetheless. At the first sign of a guesthouse, we stopped to get a drink and use the bathroom.


The guesthouse seemed clean but very, very basic--newly poured concrete everywhere. I bought two sodas and we sat to drink. I waved off the lunch menus because I knew we wouldn’t want to eat heavily during a hike. After a little break, I asked about the toilet. The women pointed me toward the back, and I was confronted with my first trough toilet. It was divided into two sections: men and women, and there were two “stalls” in each section, divided but completely open, with a long, tiled concrete trough that angled sharply down. Next to the trough was a huge pot of water with a metal dipper. You were supposed to squat over the trough and do your business and then wash everything down with the water. It was a little surprising, but not too bad--it seemed clean at least and no one was in the next stall. I wondered, though, where everything washed down to…and what happened after that? Mostly, however, I just felt a little despair--the accommodations at the guesthouses would all be like this…pretty primitive.


We continued on our way--the man with the horse still following us--only now, he would occasionally point to us and then point to the back of the horse. I kept saying “no thanks,” and we all continued up the mountain.


At this point in the hike, we began to see glimpses of the beauty of the gorge. The river had always been evident and the mountains were beautiful. I had seen pictures on the internet, and frankly, the scenery didn’t seem particularly magnificent. Based on that, I’m not quite sure why I kept this part in our itinerary. Still, we plodded on.

Along the way, I would ask the man with the horse or the vendors we encountered, where we were on the map. I kept thinking that we were surely close to or in the 24 Bends, but no, it seemed we were never very far along the trail at all. How on earth were we going to finish this hike? Time passed and the trail got steeper and steeper. The path kept changing, sometimes a narrow even track, sometimes filled with stones, sometimes wide, sometimes narrow. The one constant was that the trail frequently had horse manure along the way. The scenery along the trail was also always changing. There were often farms, but more often it was just woods, and then sometimes there would be the glimpse of the gorge. The man with the horse seemed to ask us more frequently if we wanted to ride--my intense sweating must have prompted his questions--but I always refused. To my amusement, he often got cellphone calls and would have loud one-sided conversations.


Finally, at some point even before the 24 Bends, we came across an old woman sitting at a stand at a great open cliff on the mountain, and the true panorama of Tiger Leaping Gorge came into view. It is truly magnificent. Pictures cannot capture how breathtaking it really is. She spoke to us in her halting English and we bought some drinks from her and took pictures. She had a barrier across an outcropping of rock and managed to convey to us that we could look for free, but would have to pay if we wanted to take our pictures there. We declined both.

On we climbed, marking our progress only from the amusing little signs painted on rocks along the way. Each guesthouse would announce it was next in line and tell how far the next one would be. I was impressed that the area was not more overbuilt. I had imagined guesthouses littering the landscape everywhere, but they were usually an hour apart, often more than that. I was also impressed that there weren’t more vendors, given our experience at the Great Wall. There were a few, but the trek is largely unimpeded by vendors.


We finally came to the last vendor before the 24 Bends. We stopped for another drink and short rest and the woman showed us where we were on the map. The man with the horse also pointed to the map, pointed to the 24 Bends, and then pointed to his horse. I told him no again. After we’d finished our drinks, we left, and he did not follow.


The 24 Bends turned out to be a steep rocky incline with generally short turns. After having climbed the 10 km Jinshanling to Simatai route, I actually thought the 24 Bends were not as bad as the previous part of the hike. At least the bends were short. My only thought was that if I had known where the bends actually started, I might have counted them. As we climbed, I didn’t know how far up the bends we’d actually gone. It didn’t seem too bad and then we were finally out.

The old adage says, What goes up must come down. So it was with us. While easier on the heart and lungs, the trek down is harder on your feet, knees, and calves. Still, it was a relief to get a break from the relentless uphill climb. Right after the 24 Bends, comes a steeper downhill section, which eventually begins to level off to a mild downhill slope. It was about 2:30 pm at that point, and we had probably only gone one-third of the way through the hike. After having seen the initial hostel, I thought we should press ahead to Tina’s, thinking it must be a better place to stay, although I had no real factual basis for that opinion. Getting to Tina’s surely seemed impossible. I figured we’d have to stop hiking somewhere between 6 and 7 pm. China tends to get light early and go dark early, so I had no good way to know when exactly the light would go. I did have a small flashlight in my pack, though. In the meantime, my back started to ache pretty significantly. I had only packed a minimum of stuff, but had overloaded my pack, hoping to save Kinsey. It didn’t help that it wasn’t a proper backpacking pack, just a basic school backpack. I kept shifting things around and wishing I had hired the horse to carry the pack. Somehow, in my tortured thinking, that wouldn’t have been cheating and we could still say we’d done the whole route. But the horse was gone, so there was nothing else to do but soldier on.


Back pains aside, I really enjoyed the downward trek. The flora and fauna were always changing, as was the trail. And the view was still spectacular. I should also mention that while the views are spectacular, the dropoffs are also spectacular. We met some couples with children between the ages of 6 and 8 who were hiking the gorge, and I wondered if they were constantly worrying about the dropoff.

Meanwhile, we kept checking our progress by the guesthouse signs we would pass. Many times we didn’t even see the houses, as you’d have to leave the trail in order to get to them. The hours wore on. Kinsey noted that we hiked at a slightly slower rate than the signs estimated. This was not only due to our slow hiking pace, but also because we would often stop to take pictures. My hopes for Tina’s were fading.

At about 5 pm, I could tell my reserves were fading, so I told Kinsey to sit and rest. We hadn’t eaten much, so I pulled out a Clif bar (one of our last from the US. There are no Clif bars here, and I think they’re indispensable on some days, so if you like them, I’d tell you to bring quite a few) and had the bright idea to take some Advil for my back. After only ten minutes, I felt quite better, and we struck out on the path again. We started to meet a few hikers traveling in the opposite direction, toward Qiaotou, which we had just left. One hiker was a Chinese man who spoke a little English. I asked for his opinion on when it would get dark, and he suggested 7 pm. Could we make it to Tina’s by then?

I tried to pick up the pace, and just before six, we came to a small waterfall. We took pictures and started off down the track, when we could see behind us, a couple of hikers. We continued on, and eventually came out onto a wide, newly paved road. I hadn’t heard about this part, but we walked on. After about 10 minutes, Kinsey noted that the hikers behind us were catching up. When we met up, I asked them where they were planning to stay for the night, trying to gauge whether we were in shot of Tina’s, but I was estimating that it was still an hour and a half away--too far for us to make before dark. The hikers, a young hard-core traveling couple from Europe, told me that they were going to stay at Halfway House for the night.


“How far away is it?” I asked.


“Just a few hundred meters,” they said, and then they smiled and walked on.


“Do you think we should stay there?” I asked Kinsey. “Or should we keep going to Five Fingers?”


She shrugged. We kept walking and then saw a fork in the road, one branch with a painted sign pointing to Halfway House.


“Well, let’s go see it,” I said. “If it doesn’t look good, we can go on.”


We followed the track, which was surprisingly long, winding between chicken coops, farms, and other buildings. At some point, I started thinking, “I don’t want to have to walk all the way back to the trail!” Eventually we came to another sign for Halfway House with an arrow pointing into a courtyard. Kinsey, with more youthful energy than I, walked in first, and said, “This looks pretty good.”

I followed, and we went down some steep stone steps into a courtyard. The hostel seemed to have four or five buildings in a rough semi-circle around an open courtyard.

Several other hikers were already there, asking about rooms for the night. We waited for a few minutes, until an older gentleman came over and I enquired if he had rooms. Yes, he said, there were rooms of several different styles. I asked if I could see them. He disappeared to get the keys and then led us up to the third floor of one of the buildings and unlocked the door. We were greeted by a clean, new-looking room, with two twin beds, fresh bedding, an exposed brick wall, and trim and carved wooden window panels in warm pine. He showed us the private bathroom with stone floor and walls, a nice shower area, and a western toilet. I was in heaven! It was actually nicer than Panba!

“How much?” I asked.


“Two hundred,” he said.


“Two hundred!” I said, a little loudly and somewhat shocked. I didn’t have the faculties to process the yuan into dollars at that instant, but 200 sounded high. At the same time, I was desperate for the luxury, so I quickly amended my answer. “I’ll take it!” I couldn’t even consider hiking around to see the other rooms. Sly innkeeper that he was, the owner had taken me to the most expensive room first, I later learned. Still, after translating yuan into dollars, I wasn’t going to complain about $29 USD.


The owner left us, and I slowly unpacked our meager belongings. “I’m going to put on my flip-flops and go out to the terrace,” I said to Kinsey.


“Flip flops!” she cried. I had managed to pack flip-flops thinking we’d be staying in a dreadful place and need them for the bathroom. It turned out that after hiking, flip-flops were the perfect remedy for sore feet.


We dropped our shoes, stretched our toes and took off for the terrace I’d seen across the courtyard. As we were leaving, two new travelers came by, one of them almost hitting a worker with something sticking out of his backpack.


“Sorry,” he cried. It was a kite, and they explained that they wanted to try to fly the kite here.


“Tell us when you’re going to do it,” I said. “We’d love to see that.”


The terrace turned out to be the most gorgeous spot of the entire guesthouse. The owner had put a lot of thought into building his place, and the terrace hung right at the edge, giving a masterful view of the gorge. Most of the people staying at the guesthouse seemed to be hanging out there, or heading there as they arrived. There were lots of tables, chairs, and a couple of bench swings. It was here that I met the most hardcore travelers we’ve yet encountered.

The couple we initially met on the road turned out to be going around the world. It seemed as though they’d done a lot of traveling before. They had started off separately from Germany, meeting in Mongolia. The guy had hitchhiked from Germany to Mongolia in 17 days. The girl had gone a different way, but their plan was to go through Asia, over to New Zealand and Australia, and then make their way to South America all without using a plane. The rest of us were aghast, not quite envisioning how this would work, but lauding their fortitude. The two guys with the kite were traveling together, although I never did quite find out how they knew each other. One was Chinese with great English and a full-blown camera setup and the other was an affable Frenchman with a kite. The last set of people I met was a family with two small children, a girl and boy, about 7 and 9 years old. The parents were from Toronto (although the mother was from Michigan), and they were teaching at an International School in Suzhou, taking a break for National Week. The dad seemed more like a hard-core traveler now settled down with a family, but itching to do some things. The mom was happy to travel, but a little more protective of her kids. We talked as moms do, and she asked questions about home schooling, while I asked her how her kids had adjusted to China. She was pretty frank, and told me it was incredibly hard in the beginning, that after the first few months, she wondered if they hadn’t made a huge mistake because she could tell her son was unhappy. The other teachers told her to wait, that it would get better, which it did, but she said they wouldn’t go to another country.


“We could probably stay in China for another contract,” she said, “but I wouldn’t move to a whole new country and do this again. It was too hard on my son.”


She told me that almost every time they went out, the Chinese wanted to take pictures of their kids. It wasn’t so bad in Shanghai, which was more cosmopolitan, but in Xi’an, they encountered busloads of Chinese who were touring for the first time and had never seen a foreigner. They often picked her children up without asking or touched them. Her daughter had a hard time with that, although her son loved being in pictures. Curiously, she said, no one ever bothered her or her husband. Just the kids.


We ate dinner and the evening wound down. We retired to our room, where I discovered the bed was one of the softest I’d had anywhere in China.


TIGER LEAPING GORGE, DAY 2


After a good night’s sleep on a softish bed, I was ready to go and pleasantly surprised that I wasn’t much affected by the hike, other than a little stiffness. Kinsey slept in a little, and I went out to the terrace for a breakfast of apple pancake with honey.


The two guys were out planning their day, and I enquired if they were going to fly the kite.


“Yes, we should do that!” they enthused and went off to get the kite. I decided I’d better give Kinsey fair warning, so I went off to let her know. She popped out of bed immediately, and I went back to finish my breakfast.


About ten minutes later, the guys were laying out the kite, tying everything together and getting it ready.

The owner and the guesthouse staff somehow found out what was going on and came out to investigate. Everyone was quite excited. Perhaps no one had thought of doing this before. The owner inserted himself in the process and was helping however he could.

The three Chinese girls who did the cooking and cleaning, lined up along the railing and watched with great interest and amusement. Eventually Kinsey showed up, as well as a few other guests.


The two guys and the owner tried again and again to launch the kite, but the winds were fickle, swirling up and then dying down. At last they managed to get the kite aloft, and the winds blew it over the guesthouse, but alas! After only a short flight, the kite nose-dived into the courtyard.

After that, though there were many attempts they could not get the kite up for a decent flight. The crowd dispersed and the kite was packed away for another attempt in Tibet.


Kinsey ate some of my apple pancake, and then we decided to finish of the hike. We packed up and this time I spread the weight a little more evenly, figuring Kinsey could take a little more weight for only an hour and a half. The newly packed bag was much better for my back, and we started off.


Only about 30 minutes from the guesthouse, we came upon a waterfall that cascaded over the trail. It was long, but widespread, so that the water did not gush with intense force. We stood in the waterfall and took pictures--it was just lovely. We met up with the family with the young children right about then. The father had gone across and a little distance to see what it was like. The mom stayed behind with the kids. She told me they had decided to get a van from Halfway House, as the downhill hike was actually harder on the kids than the uphill. We bid them goodbye, and went on.

 The trail downhill was not as bad from this side as it would have been if we had walked the opposite direction from Tina’s to Qiaotou. We made decent time. It probably took us two hours to finish the hike and we strolled into Tina’s around noon, meeting up with almost all of the people from Panba’s. The four American students had just hiked around Tina’s and stayed the night. Everyone else had done the hike straight through and arrived at Tina’s around 6 pm. They were all taking off for Shangri-la at 3 pm. Kinsey and I ordered lunch and hung out until the van arrived at 4 pm. The ride back was largely uneventful, and the driver dropped us off in Old Town, where we could walk back to Panba.


We took one last wander though Lijiang, buying a couple of bags of walnut cakes--small cakes made in presses that are shaped like walnuts. They have walnut and a melted bean inside. Quite delicious, though I suspect they might improve with a dusting of maple sugar. Kinsey bought a silver tiger charm to celebrate her hike through Tiger Leaping Gorge, and we window-shopped all the way back to the hostel.

Nick was at the desk when we returned, and there was a couple with him asking questions about the trek. We imparted all our new useful knowledge, and then headed up to our new room. Even though we hadn’t walked as far, I was still tired, and we needed to get up for a flight to Guilin in the morning.