Tiger Leaping Gorge Trek and Old Town Lijiang

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Please check out trek photos under the "Yunnan Province" section of the blog...

TIGER LEAPING GORGE

Wed 14/3 - Three hour taxi ride with our Hong Kong/Chinese friends Grace and Summer (voluntary tour guides/interpreters!) via a mountainside Buddhist temple where we were privileged to meet an 89 year old monk writing beautiful calligraphy wall hangings (see the pic of Mark with this man - inter-faith dialogue is alive and well).  He gifted us a scroll which may make it to a wall at Faraday sometime.  One o'clock and we said our farewells at Qiatou (the south-west end of the Gorge) bought our permit tickets, were issued with the local mud map and headed off a little apprehensively yet also excited at what might be in store for us.  TLG is the largest gorge on the Yangtse River and one of the largest in the world, is over 20 kms in length, and from the water level to the top of the snow-capped mountains well above our trail is a giddy 3900 metres!  After 2 1/2 hours and 7 kms of mostly uphill we reached our destination, the Naxi Family Guesthouse where we reserved our room, ordered a late lunch and took a welcome refreshing shower.  We were the only guests this night, 30RMB or A$5 for our room with double bed and private bathroom - what a privilege to enjoy such warm traditional hospitality from this family.  8pm dinner - fried pork and veg and an impromptu English lesson for the keen young man of the house, Li Jiang Long.

Thur 15/3

7.40 our wake-up call as requested = loud banging on the door!  Maize porridge, Naxi style apple pancakes and coffee for brekkie before we settle the food bill 80RMB for three meals, and 8.50am we're on our way for the big day...  We soon passed a solo woman walker from Taiwan, the only soul we encountered all morning.  Reached "The Top" 2670metres, perhaps not as difficult as we'd anticipated.  A 30 minute tea rest break at Tea Horse Trade Guesthouse at noon, then onto Halfway House for 2pm lunch, with a gaggle of Chinese staff of the Mars corporation on a work "bonding" trip = free Snickers bars all round  :-)

Through a very challenging waterfall after lunch - looked spectacular from every angle and we're glad it's the dry season!  Up and down and up and down with lots of sensational views looking down on the river with some great rapids.  5pm and we bypassed Tina's Guesthouse and a couple of others and chose Woody's in Walnut Grove at about 6pm.  A hot shower never felt so good.  Drinks, food and home in bed by 8.45pm to read and reflect on our wonderful day.

Fri 16/3

Awake 7.50 (later than planned, but no alarm clock with us), showers, pack, brekkie of maize porridge with banana, banana pancake and Lipton tea (in China, if you will) for about $2.60, and by 9.10am we were on our way.  Mostly flat or downhill today, so we make good time around the "new village" skirting wheat fields and grateful for the occasional red arrow roughly painted on rocks to guide our direction.  No other walking companions today until nearly the end of the trek.  Women harvesting wheat by hand, then it's down, down, down to the river - we wish we had the agility of the mountain goats we'd seen - by then four Chinese companions had joined us, one with good English, so together we negotiated the river ferry crossing $2.50 each, and walked the final 3 kms into Daju after scrambling/puffing our way up from the river level/side of the gorge to the road and farmland outside the town of Daju.  Over lunch there we discovered the scheduled 1.30pm or 2.00pm daily bus back to Lijiang was "cancelled", so fortunately our new Chinese companions agreed to squeeze us into their micro-bus, and the driver was so convinced with a payment of 80RMB! 

We took the long route home via Yak Meadow and an exploration of the Yi people's trade and commerce stalls.  Wait til you see Mark's yak hat!  7pm - we'd had a snooze on the bus, not surprisingly, and we were delivered to the perimeter of the Old Town to collect our big backpacks from our former guesthouse - no room at the inn tonight! - so we were taken to a neighbouring establishment up the hill a little.  We're not too choosy, any bed would do for that night, so after showers and refreshing change of clothes we headed out to our favourite "Well Bistro" for a quick dinner and home to sleep well, after the most activity we've undertaken in 10 weeks, and what feels like the likely highlight of our trip.

The occasional "Missing" poster of a female German tourist along the trek was a sobering reminder of how easily one could come to grief with a slip of the foot in some loose gravel on the track - that would make a long drop!  We felt well looked after through this adventure and grateful to have seen this magnificent landscape - the river will shrink to a trickle if the damming of the Yangtse goes ahead in the next few years.

Sat 17/3

Sleep in welcome - no pressure to get up and go anywhere or catch any taxis, buses, trains or taxis!  We breakfast at the Well Bistro and welcome meeting Margot and son Daniel from Vancouver Canada, who sing high praises of their accommodation at Moon Inn, with free internet and laundry.  After fruit/muesli/yoghurt and a crepe (brunch) we inspect Moon Inn and agree to change locations.  So back to our previous He He Inn to pack up from our poky smelly room and step up a little at the Moon!  (We warmly recommend it - no website but email them: xoonline8@126.com) or phone: (0888) 518 0520.

After we'd made the shift Jan discovers her I-pod missing - after carefully checking our luggage we scramble back to He He Inn, and after a long and protracted process which included our calling for the police, the I-pod and camera-PC lead were miraculously produced from the cleaner's room!  This we've called "The I-pod Incident" - we're sure the young female staff were "trying it on" with us to see if we'd give up and go away - they miscalculated our persistence!  (We knew it was in the room and stuff doesn't vanish.)  It's been lovely to enjoy the warm hospitality at Moon Inn - we got a big load of washing done, then out for an early dinner at the Prague Cafe with some shopping en route - Jan picked up a nice knitted hat from Nepal and Mark procured a woven leather belt (supposedly yak but later we discover this is most doubtful as the animals are protected and rare).  After chicken soup, pork and rice Japanese style for Mark and a chicken steak with chips and salad for Jan, we're home for reading, diary and an early night after a day with considerable emotional challenge.

Sun 18/3

We had the latest sleep-in of the trip - 10.00am - we couldn't believe it - obviously we needed it!  We chose in-house breakfast made by the hotel "girls" - Chinese small buns dipped in sugar, poached eggs in hot sweet milk - good sustenance for the day ahead.  Some time on internet and Jan uploading photos to the blog, then we took advantage of a beautiful blue sky sunny day to walk 15 minutes out of the Old Town to Black Dragon Pool Park (see blog photo).  We enjoy a walk around the large lake, walking the various bridges and looking inside the pagodas.  Plenty of souvenir stalls but no one is aggressively trying to sell.  We visited a gallery of BEAUTIFUL silk embroidery and saw the young women at their craft... exquisite.

Walking back to the Old Town we call into the International Ethnic Cultural Exchange Centre (mouthful!) to find the next "show" is to start in a few minutes - for $20 each we decide to go for it.  Whilst it seems to be keyed predominantly for the large numbers of Chinese tourists coming into Lijiang by bus, it's good to see there is some electronic English signage to help interpret the show of dance, lighting and music.  Wonderful costumes and spectacular colour made it well worthwhile.

Then home to get dressed for the cooler night air - we check out the free nightly concert in one of the city squares - sort of up-market karaoke!  Then onto dinner at the Naxi Family Cafe - we realise that 8.30pm is a bit late for them - most Chinese eat at 6pm and lunch is often 11.00am after their early morning starts (like Vietnam, retail/service industry workers put in amazing hours - the girls at reception here remain on duty until midnight - they live on site).

Western cafe for photo/CD burning but the system was broken so instead we booked return flights to Kunming for just under A$70 each - home 10pm to diary, read and we're glad of the slower pace of these days, having decided to drop Dali from the itinerary and explore Lijiang at greater depth.  No hint of any presence of Christian church in this place, and so a Sunday goes by without us engaging in worship with locals.

Mon 19/3

The rooster chorus near our bedroom begins at around 4.00am and lasts on and off through til about 9.00am!  We now realise how people managed before alarm clocks or cellphone wake-up reminders.  Mark having vivid dreams of various church themes including Ilkeston UK stuff - amazing what we carry in our subliminal memory banks eh?  Brekkie at local cafe - rice/maize porridge and pancake and scrambled eggs, with apple juice, hot choc and ginger tea, all for $6.50 = brunch.  We go exploring the narrow cobbled streets of this UNESCO World Heritage-listed Old Town and walk to the margins to enjoy some small work shops with real sewing, weaving, leather bag and shoe making - all very interesting away from the hub-bub of tourist focus.  We find a little sign for CD burning outside a shop so we clear some space out of our camera with a very helpful proprietor, Justin Yang, who has excellent English.  His wife is a Thai woman who lives in Chiang Mai and he imports and sells lots of clothes and artifacts - Jan scored Nimbin-style trousers and some jewellery.  We enjoyed his company so much we invited him to dinner later. 

Home for a pit stop then out to walk Lion Hill Park and up the five storey Wangu Tower, a wooden structure with great views in every direction.  Drinks at a nearby rooftop cafe, then home again for warmer clothes for evening - dinner with Justin includes yak meat, fish and yummy vegies and two more hours of stimulating conversation - religion, politics, family life, culture, the marketplace and study.

Tue 20/3

The roosters win again at about 8.15am - up, shower etc - and back to Well Bistro... so named because of its proximity to the traditional well for the ancient village of Lijiang.  The bistro's menu interestingly  features a quote from John's Gospel - Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well : "Whosoever drinks of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinks of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him, shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting Life." Jn 4:13-14)  We enquire with our regular waitress about the choice of the quote and if she knew whether the owner was a Christian but she didn't know yay or nay.  We did help her understand that the quote was of Jesus as recorded in the Christian scriptures.

Muesli, fruit and yoghurt goes down well - it's great to enjoy some familiar foods when you're on the road in foreign parts for so long and a small number of cafe proprietors have worked this out and cater for the western taste extremely well.  Home to pack and check out of our room, but the staff have kindly suggested we can have a late checkout of 6.00pm and use this internet access this afternoon as much as we want - very kind (they even ply us with copious volumes of green tea) - and they're fascinated to look over our shoulder from time to time as we upload photos and write this blog - even innocently excited at the prospect that their photo is posted on our site!

Out for a gentle stroll to break up the afternoon then home for a snooze before we navigate to the airport bus for the 45 minute drive to our 8.00pm flight Lijiang to Kunming and back to Camellia Hotel for one night.  The delights of Nanning and Guangxi Province await us, but they'll need to be good to compete with what we've experienced here in Yunnan Province.

Blessings to all our readers!