Most beautiful and unhelpful Li Jiang

The many roof tops in the Old Town of LiJiang
see all photos »

We arrived in Li Jiang to find it full, contrary to the Lonely Planet's statement that "Lijiang has hundreds of guesthouses, you won't have a problem finding accommodation".  Emma and Edde ended up in a dorm room at Dongba Guesthouse and Ross, James and I slept in a 3 bed room at the International Youth Hostel (which sucked - see review).  It was about 9pm when we were all booked in so we headed to the Prague Cafe for a nice dinner, though James left early due to food poisoning.

View down into Tiger Leaping Gorge
see all photos »

The next day was spent roaming the rabbit warren the Old TOwn is to find a bus to Tiger Leaping Gorge and a guide to Lhasa.  No one could (or would) help us.  Eventually we gave up on the Tibet tour and just concentrated on finding a bus to the Gorge.  We managed to find a map and information at the Hiking Club.  We had an ok dinner at the Well Bistro (nice and cheap) and made plans to leave the hostel at 6:30am to not miss out on a ticket for the 7:30am bus to Qiatou (village at the beginning of the Gorge).  Unfortunately, the crap and lazy staff at the hostel decided to sleep in that day.  We had to hammer at their bedroom door and yell at them to make them get up.  Not only that but they'd tied their dog to the chair in reception and he had pooped, wee'd and vomited all over the floor.  We stepped over it holding our noses as a fat Chinese man wearing only a towel unlocked the front door to let us out.

thunder was shaking our beds, as the lightening lit up our room

The Gorgeous Gorge
see all photos »

Thanks to them, we missed our bus and ended up in Qiatou at midday, right in time for the heat of the day.  After 2 hours of ascending up the mountain in the searing sun, Emma decided to ride a horse the rest of the way.  We stopped at the Naxi Family Guesthouse for a bland lunch.  We head off for another torturous 2 hours of climbing up the 28 Bends.  We struggled up there with half an hour to spare and collapsed under a tent, buying apples off an old lady (which gave Emma food poisoning actually).  The best lookout spot was sectioned off by a resourceful local who demanded we pay 8 RMB to look at the gorge from the overhanging rock he obviously considered to be his.  James refused to pay and climbed over the barrier to look anyway.  After a decent rest we set off for the last 2 hour walk of the day, nice and shaded and mostly level.  We walked with 2 Indian poms and one of them said something about a "miniature horse" and dissapeared down a dark little track.  Emma and I decided we wanted to see the horse too so we followed him and he turned around startled.  James yelled to us "He said Nature Calls!"  So embarassing.  We arrived at the Halfway House at 6pm to shower, book into our 4 bed dorm room and down a couple of well deserved beers.

We woke up the next day at 4am to the loudest thunder storm we'd ever heard.  It was so loud the thunder was shaking our beds, as the lightening lit up our room.  We were going to head off at 6am, but waited the storm out and left at 8am instead.  We were planning to do the 6 hour walk to Dazu (the last village in the Gorge) and get back in time for the bus to take us back to LiJiang, unfortunately Emma's food poisoning hit her before we got there, so we finished up at the over-rated Walnut Grove and got a bus back to Qiatou from there.  A lady took us back on her bus to LiJiang and we were so tired, James left the camera on the bus.  While Emma and Edde headed off to Zhongdian, we went back to Qiatou, endeavoring to recover our camera.  We stayed at Jane's Guesthouse, Jane was a really camp Chinese guy who wore tight pants, top, hot pink sandals and a headband in his long curly, red-dyed hair.  He was helpful but we didn't get our camera back, sigh...