We spent a couple of nights in the delightful tourist trap that is Lijiang (will try and blog about this later), but our main reason for being in Yunnan province was to visit the legendary Tiger Leaping Gorge.
Depending on how you like to measure your gorges, Tiger Leaping Gorge is the world's deepest, at 2km deep and 30 km long. The gorge itself is an absolute bitch to get to as the one road that runs along it has been destroyed by numerous landslides. As a result the tourist buses only dare to venture to the edge of the gorge, where the masses take their obligatory photo's and then promptly bugger off back to their hotels in Lijiang and Shangri-La.
But not us, oh no. We had intentions of getting deep in to the gorge in order to breathe its fresh air and walk its hidden trails! This would have been impossible were it not for the help of a village leader named Sean, who we'd contacted many months before from the UK.
He arranged for a driver to pick us up from Lijiang and do the two hour drive to the start of the gorge. Here, we were picked up by his daughter, Lucy, who revealed to us that we had another 5 cars to catch. Somewhat puzzled by this, we transferred in to hers and cracked on. The reasons soon became apparent - we were the human batons in a landslide relay! Each car would go along the gorge road until it hit a point where where it could go no further. This was usually due to severe rock fall, or even worse, where the road itself had fallen in to the gorge. At this point, we'd unload and carry our luggage to another car waiting at the other side of the blockage and continue until the next impasse, where another changeover would take place. How clever!
Unfortunately I had come down with man-flu the day before and was near the point of death. I was therefore absolutely overjoyed to find myself carrying 35 kilo's of luggage (trunk on the shoulder, backpacks on front and back) across a collapsed road with a sheer drop two feet to my right!
We arrived at Sean's guesthouse at noon where we met our host and guide for the first time. There's a distinct Yoda like vibe around this little Tibetan guy, which is exactly what one looks for in a mountain guide in one of China's most legendary treking spots. We spent the afternoon walking down to the river, but Sean promises us a much more substantial trek to the higher reaches of the gorge tomorrow...
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