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Published: October 7th 2005
After three solid days of travel we have finally made it to the trail head of the Tiger Leaping Gorge. We rolled off the bus this morning wide-eyed and weary. As we unloaded our packs from the top of the min-bus, Gorged Tiger Cafe owner, Margo met us and immediately offered us a clean room and a shower. Hallelujah!!
This area of China looks and feels different than the other cities we've been in. Being so close to Tibet, things are a little more laid back and quiet. It is a lot cooler, as well. It feels strange to finally wear the long pants and jacket I have had stashed away in my bag for so long. Soon I'll be shopping for thermal underwear and a hat!
Oh, the things Gerry and I have endured since my last blog...China has certainly decided to show her real face to us foreign travelers. This being national vacation week here, we could only get "standing -room" tickets on the train to Guilin. Unfortunately we didn't read the sentence in the guide book about that which boldly states "standing on the train from Giulin to Kunming is highly inadvisable!" We learned our lesson the hard
way crammed onto the train with hundreds of locals with 2 million packages of lord-knows- what. After a few minutes a train attendant took pity on us and upgraded us to hard sleepers. Thank goodness!!!! But not without incident. A drunk Chinese man on the dining car we passed through thought we looked like a nice target for his verbal abuse and we very narrowly escaped a brawl (involving food). The rest of the train ride was less than relaxing as a few Chinese kids found us and wouldn't stop bugging us.
In Kunming we took the next overnight bus out of town headed for Lijiang. Once again, we were piled in with the locals. The Chinese seem to prefer giant sleeper buses for overnight trips. Which basically consist of 4 slender rows of tiny bunk beds. I don't suppose it would have been so bad we we not had a party of old Chinese men in the back acting like little boys. They were yelling, smoking, smacking, and hacking up a lung every 5 minutes. Our driver pulled up to a gas station about an hour into the trip and had a fight with another bus driver which resulted
in a few people getting kicked off or bus. All very strange indeed. We were groggy and cold when we got off the bus this morning. We gathered our bags to find they had been packed in beside a crate full of rancid mystery liquid which had spilled all over our bags. Lovely!!
I has to do some finagling at the ticket counter to get us tickets to the Gorge. Aaargh!! The ride here was fantastic, though and more than made up for the unfriendly bus staff. The scenery looks very similar to Izumi Village, back in Japan - just on a grander scale. Tomorrow we head out for the trail along with a few other backpackers we met at Margo's. Tiger Leaping Gorge is the deepest gorge in the world and we should be in for some amazing views. Check it out here: http://www.tigerleapinggorge.com/
I don't think I'll be able to post photos until we get to Beijing next week. So, hang tight!
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