Blogs from Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yunnan, China, Asia - page 3

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

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

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, April 2, 2008 First few days First day spent in Shanghai waiting for evening flight to Huangshan. The architecture at The Bund was very interesting - 'a touch of Palladian among the Art Deco in China'. Late night flight to Huangshan City. Early start for 1 and/2 hour drive to base of mountain. After passing through flat terraced fields blooming with canola, later to be planted with rice, we were on a toll road to rival anything in Europe, with numerous tunnels. This took us quickly into steep lower maountain slopes with every piece of usable land terraced for tea bushes. Higher up was bamboo forest and above 800 m pine forest. Large bamboo being harvested. Very new modern cable cars carrying six people took us up, over breathtakingly steep terrain, jagged granite peaks rising ... read more