Blogs from Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yunnan, China, Asia

forgot to mention that Katie had her ears cleaned in a tea house in chengdu. Which was minging esp when the man insisted on showing me her earwax every time. love of my life??? (katie: actually it felt really nice when he was doing it, I didn't enjoy the bit when he took great pleasure in showing both me and Michael my ear wax though!) 4th oct arrived in lijang 5th oct explored the old town of lijang but had to put up with every 3rd shop playing the same beeping song, NA DE DA DE DA DE DA. go on sing it, get it stuck in your head, feel our pain!!! my favorite part of lijang at this point is when we stopped to look at a map on the wall and i asked ... read more

I’ll let the pictures tell most of the story of my 2 day hike into Tiger Leaping Gorge. The Gorge earned this name because, it is told, a tiger once leaped across the narrowest part of the Gorge. It is about a 2 hour trip from Lijiang, but will be faster late next year when a new road will be completed most of the way there. At that point, I fear, the crowds may ruin the place a bit. The hike begins up a fairly steep grade, at one point, with 28 switchbacks. At about 6,000 ft elevation, this got me huffing a bit, but the views once at the top are spectacular. I stayed at the Tea Horse Inn about half way along in the hike. A better place would have been 40 minutes ahead ... read more

Monday 5 Sep ----------------------- I arranged to leave most of my belongings at the hostel while I went for a 2 day trip to ‘Tiger Leaping Gorge’ – reputed to be one of the deepest (or the deepest) gorges on Earth. This is about 2.5 hours by bus up in the mountains from Lijiang. We got there about 10:30AM, and started walking. My goal was about 4 to 6 hours of walking the first day to get to a nice guesthouse for the night. After a nice start through lovely fields of corn and sunflowers, and walking with some Chinese and German people, the track started heading uphill, and it started getting pretty hard work. It might have been the altitude but I wasn’t doing very well. It was also pretty warm. After maybe 2 hours ... read more

I should mention that I am now in the province of Yunnan and prior to the trek I spent a night in Lijiang which was again very touristy consisting of an old town which was a maze of cobbled streets and rebuilt rickety wooden buildings but to be honest I feel there was not much to blog about so I shall move swiftly on. Well, here it is, the much anticipated Tiger Leaping Gorge trek. I am pleased to say that there was no tigers as the chinese have eaten them all and another bonus was the only things I had to negotiate along the track was an over-protective mountain cow, a snake a couple of mountain ponies and the scourching sun. Have you noticed something? I haven't mentioned Chinese tourists, ok they were a couple ... read more

This is the story of the man who went up a gorge...and came back a tomato face. It was with a little trepidation that we got up early, finished packing our bags and headed out to the bus stop to get us to the gorge. We managed to arrive early, quiet a feat as we weren't sure where we were going and found out that we had time for some breakfast. Grabbing some local street food, some sort of breadesque base with a fried egg and spices, (which was great) we boarded the bus and headed off to Tiger Leaping Gorge. The views along the way to the start of the trek were amazing and we were happy when we stopped off at a photo spot to grab some early morning piccies of the snow capped ... read more

Our hostel arranged minibus transport to the Qiaotou side of Tiger Leaping Gorge for 30 kuai a person. In total our group had two minibuses and included Mary, an opera singer from Australia who was on a big Asia travel, Amber, an American teaching English in Beijing, Susannah from Holland who was on a gap year, Rachel, a drama student from America who was in between schools, her cousin Jamie, a Canadian who was between school and work, Kendal, a Chemist and high school teacher who was on vacation, and Krisdian and Hendy two Indonesians on vacation. Qiaotou was only about 2 hours away, though we had to make a quick detour to pick up our driver's son, fiance, friends, and their pet falcon (!) and drop them in the village that I had biked around ... read more

Wednesday, 20 October... Over the last few days all talk has been about  Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize and typhoon Megi amongst Western travellers.  Opinions are mixed about Liu - some feel it should be called the Nobel Political Prize and that it's another way to undermine China as a serious player on the world stage.  China's English speaking papers and TV barely touched on the matter and what was reported seemed to emphasise Liu's criminal record.  Talk inevitably leads to the pros and cons of a one-party autocratic state vs. a Western multi-party system with interesting and varying views... Megi has started to change direction and is heading toward Hong Kong, where we'll be next week.  We're watching the news carefully on a daily basis, ready to change our plans accordingly.  It seems ... read more