Tiger Leaping Gorge-ous

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We are back in civilization.....Lijang in fact. It's a cute
little town with traditional chinese rooftops and cobble stone
streets.....really touristy but nice. There's your movie set red lanterns
and little bridges with koi swimming under them and every corner you turn
there's a different color flag and a tour group wearing red hats following
it like a guiding star. Another traveller we met correctly dubbed it, "ethnic Disney
Land.
Tiger leaping gorge:
The drive into the starting village was a bit annoying since i was
bombarded with the habitual beginning- to- bitter- end cigarette chain
smoking that chinese men do. We arrived at Jane's Guesthouse because the
lonely planet said it would be a nice place to stay and that she would be
helpful in assisting us towards the trail. Turns out Jane is a
man....but he/she was very nice. We started trekking and it was crazy hot.
I mean, talk about a drastic change. Last week we were freezing our nipples
off and then suddenly we were trekking in a gorge that actually had cactus
and palm trees growing in it. We certainly weren't expecting the heat. The
gorge itself is phenomenal. The Yangtze powers through it at the very
bottom and steep jagged SNOW COVERED peaks top it off. It's a strange thing
to see cactus and snow in the same field of vision. It is one of the
largest gorges in the world.....rising to a height of i think around 12,000
feet from water to peak. It was impressive. The trek was unforgiving.
There was a segment called the "28 bends" which was a series of relentless
switchbacks. The view from the top, as usual, was worth the climb. Looking over the
edge was scary----it seems like somewhere one would bungee jump or
something. There were various guesthouses to stop at along the way and we
spent 3 days in the gorge just hiking and relaxing. We ended at Tina's,
which is a restaurant/hotel that has one of the most dramatic porches i have
ever seen. When you sit at a table all you can see in front of you is the
gorge wall and it looks as if the porch drops off into oblivion----good
stuff. We actually met a couple of doctors from boulder there (apparently
we have a knack for meeting doctors). It was a wonderful hike but a little
bittersweet. In 2008 the chinese government will be damming (damning) it for
more power. When the water rises it will wipe out countless minority
villages and their livelihood, guesthouses, roads.....not to mention a
beautiful environment. Sad stuff, but China seems to be full of that kind
of drama. Antiquity isn't valued by the government, progress is. It'll be
interesting to see how the countryside changes in the next few years.
We will be spending a couple of days here in Lijang and then we fly back to
chengdu. The Yunnan province is really beautiful. There's something really artistic
about the terraced fields of gold, brown, and green with the mountains rising
verdantly behind it all. It makes me miss the days when i was a kid playing
on my aunt and uncle's farm.

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