Lijiang and the Tiger Leaping Gorge

I'm back in Guangzhou as I write this. I had trouble accessing Blogger from Lijiang for whatever reason, so this is the first chance I've had to write in a while.

Lijiang reminded me a lot of Venice if it were a Chinese city. The original town is something like 800 years old or so. There's no cars in the old city and the streets are all stone. The houses and buildings are all old-style and the city is extremely attractive to walk around. There is a new city surrounding the old, but pretty much everything I write about here refers to the old town where most people who visit spend the majority or entirety of their time. So the town is very old-looking, but many of the buildings as it turns out are new construction done in the old style. This doesn't really have an adverse effect in my opinion on the appeal of the place, and I quite enjoyed the time I spent there. There are loads of tourists everywhere and many open-faced shops in which you can buy all manner of knick-knacks and snacks, such as dried yak meat or yak cheese. Tea is a popular product as well, as it is throughout Yunnan province. There are also tons of clothes, many in the style of the local ethnic minority, the Naxi. I learned about an interesting local religion and language called Dongba, the language of which is the only existing pictographic language I believe. It looks a lot like Egyptian hieroglyphics.

I spent a few nights in Lijiang and the day wandering the city often in no particular direction. I hung out a bit with my friend Carrie and her friend Gill who happened to be traveling in that region around the same time so we made it a point to meet up. I ate an awful lot of street food and it was great. I had a bunch of other decent meals including a bunch of unusual Naxi dishes that happened to be vegetarian. One is the ever-present "baba," a flatbread that is found just about everywhere in the area. Another was this strange flat and cold noodle made from beans of some sort and served in a bowl with some oil, veggies, and chilis. All in all, a beautiful town to spend time and a recommended visit in China for anyone thinking of going.

The main thing I missed last time in China that I was anxious to see this time was the Tiger Leaping Gorge, a few hours north of Lijiang. It is so called because it used to be so narrow in one particular part that it is said tigers used to leap across it. I took a 2 hour bus from Lijiang to Qiaotou and met a nice English couple from Brighton on the way, Jamie and Anita, with whom I'd end up spending the next two days hiking. The bus left Lijiang around 8:30am and we made it to Qiaotou around 10:30 or so. We set off on the trail around 11 after a cup of tea and acquisition of some supplies in Qiaotou, and that first day's hike wasn't horribly difficult, but neither was it particularly easy. There are two trails through the gorge, a high and a low path. The low path has recently been turned into a road, so that was out. The high path was the way to go, but that means going up. Lots of up. Also, the altitude was something like 2200 meters at the base and 2700 or so at the highest point. That's 7700 and 8800 feet respectively, so that could explain why we were all breathing a bit heavy and taking rests a bit more periodically than one might expect.

The views were increasingly ridiculously amazing. We walked up a winding dirt path on and on, at first with distant mountain views and through farms where locals were working on their corn fields. There are really colorful flowers everywhere, the landscape is far from bland. As we got higher and higher, we got closer to the gorge itself and walked along the edge, glimpsing the Yangze river far below. I often thought it to be one of the most amazing and beautiful things I've ever seen. Hopefully the pictures will do it some justice. We stopped for lunch at the Naxi Family Guest House. We saw occasional groups of other travelers on the trail, though when hiking it was far from crowded. Everyone keeps their own pace. One group of Israelis passed us at high-speed and we traded positions with another smaller group of 3 Israelis and a Swede regularly. One of those Israeli girls slipped in one of the many giant piles of horse shit dot the trail. Opportunistic locals hang around with their horses waiting for you to give up and shell out some ludicrous amount for a ride and a respite from the never-ending twisting and turning tail upward.

So where was I? Oh yes, lunch and then more walking. We stayed the night at the Tea Horse Guest House which was nice and pretty friendly. We befriended a group of 3 German folks, 2 guys and a girl who had met up with each other in Kunming and had been traveling together. I ended up later sharing a ride back to Lijiang with the girl, Anna, and spending some time together than evening in Lijiang before she went on to Dali and I to Guangzhou. She'd just recently spent 3 weeks in Fuzhou studying acupuncture on a break from her medical studies back in Germany. The other two, Jonathan and Bernard, were apparently unchallenged by the Tiger Leaping Gorge and set out instead towards to the Haba Snow Mountain in search of a greater challenge. They had those hiking poles that look like ski poles, so you know they were serious. So back on that first night, it was me and my English friends, the German, this Swedish guy, and like 20 Israelis. They weren't all together, but they'd ended up all together apparently. We sat at a big communal table and ate and chatted, though we were pretty exhausted and sleeping that night was quite easy. The next day we set out early and the hike was substantially less exhausting as we'd reached the highest point pretty much and it was all downhill from there. The views were no less spectacular and even moreso as we continued along the edge of the gorge, and occasionally winding in and out of some mountainous curve directly adjacent to some large and impressive waterfall across which we'd have to carefully skip stones. The whole thing was beautifully surreal and I'm very happy to have finally made this walk through a place that takes every care from your mind and just fills it instead with marvel.

I decided to stay an extra night after finishing that portion of the hike at Sean's Spring Guest House which is right near where the high road drops back down and reconnects to the low. It had a beautiful view of the sheer cliffs of the gorge and we spent the evening smoking, drinking beer, relaxing, and chatting. That evening it as us 3, the Germans who'd arrived and decided to stay a night there as well, and an older Australian couple that was very friendly. Also in attendance were Sean's cats, the mommy, the daddy, and 3 adorable kittens that would jump on anyone who permitted it. Also, we'd found a giant wild marijuana plant growing in this field and helped ourselves, though my smoking days are pretty much over so I declined. Despite that, it was the first time I'd ever seen one in the wild before and was therefore amusing. It is apparently tolerated in this area as a number of the guesthouses have "happy" pizzas, "happy" pancakes, and other assorted "happy" items on the menu. For a modest fee you can add "happy" to just about anything they serve. Too bad I didn't visit this place in college, I would've appreciated that far more I think.

So the morning after we had to wait around a bit because there was a landslide on the road which had to be cleared before we could take our buses back to our respective destinations. A few meals and walks later and here I am back in Guangzhou for two nights before a quick stop in Shenzhen to visit my friend Grace, and then a night or two in HK before I fly back to NYC on Tuesday. I think I'm ready to come back. These 6 weeks have been fantastic but exhausting. Those early destinations like Beijing and Cambodia seem like eons ago. It's hard to imagine how people keep up a pace like this. I think next time a smaller number of destinations at a slower pace is definitely the way to go. That being said, I'm really happy with how this trip turned out. I hit a few major things I'd been dying to see like the Great Wall, Angkor Wat, and Tiger Leaping Gorge, and really got my feet wet in Southeast Asia finally, something I didn't manage on my first little Asian adventure. I also rounded out my experience in China with a visit to northern Yunnan, something I'd felt was left open-ended and incomplete on my last trip due to that wretched upper-respiratory infection I'd contracted in Kunming.

So all is well, I'm still alive and apparently healthy for the moment, and looking forward to visiting these few cities I know already and the friends I have in them before I hop on my direct flight from HK back to NYC. As usual, it's great to be out here, but it'll be great to be home too. See you all soon.