Blogs from Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yunnan, China, Asia - page 5

What a fantastic place! The scenery is amazing. The Yangtze River, a pea green colour, crashes through the gorge in places, running very fast, and in others it just meanders. The surrounding mountains are magnificent. This area is very remote, very wild, each family appears to have its own little patch, growing rice and maize. There are also lots of fruit trees, some bearing pomegranites. This morning it was extremely cold, I had to wear long trousers, several layers, jacket and gloves. It warmed up though as the day progressed, and ended up a scorcher at 35 deg. When the wind blows it is like a hot air drier. Some of the roads are not made up and we have to ride over gravel. There have been lots of landslides. Health and safety regulations do not ... read more

We headed to TLG a few days later than planned on october 10th... Lijiang has a way of sucking you in for a while, in a good way though. From Lijiang we took a bus to Qaitou, which is about two hours away. It costs 20 yuan if you go to the long distance bus station - just ignore all the tour guides trying to sell 200 yuan + trips. We got to Qaitou at 10:30 am after a 2 1/2 hour bus ride, and went to Jane's guest house to store our bags, and eat breakfast. Breakfast was HUGE, we could have split one entree, but it was cheap and a good start to the hike. We had two maps for TLG that we'd picked up from different places in lijiang (one from Mama Naxi's ... read more

Our next adventure was to head to the Tiger Leaping Gorge. The gorge one of the deepest in the world, measures 16km long and is 3900m from the Jinsha River that cuts its way through to the top of the Haha mountain. We were determined to do this 2 day trek as we have read that surprise surprise the Chinese want to build at least 8 dams along the Yangzi river. Once the proposed dams are completed the dams will flood more than 13000 hectares of prime farmland, force over 100,000 people to relocate and wash away local culture, history, unique architecture and indigenous plant and animal life. So we said our goodbyes to Shangri La and Noah’s cafe by having one last pizza and BLT and headed south on a bus for 2 hours to ... read more

Because the trip from Baishuitai to Qiaotou took less than 2 ½ hours, I arrived at Jane’s Guesthouse around 10:30. I had some breakfast and found three girls (2 Americans and a German girl) that were also going to do the Tiger Leaping Gorge (said to be one of the 10 best trails in China). Because I didn’t want to do the hike on my own, I joined them. After heaving stored my backpack in the guesthouse, we started off together with a German couple. The weather was really good after the rainy and cloudy days before. Because of the heat and the height, the climb was pretty hard, but already from the start very beautiful. The climb was on some parts really steep, so the guys left us somewhere on the mountain, because they wanted ... read more

Tiger Leaping Gorge is a mountainous area where the Yangtze River cuts through. The normal path is a two day hike through the mountains looking way down to the river. I met some people from Hong Kong as I began the trek and spent the next two days with them. I definitely started to feel my age after a few hours of heading upwards. Its not the most difficult hike inthe world, but I did have to push myself a few times. The second day it rained lightly throughout most of our hike. It left a fog and mist surrounding the mountains and cooled things down a little without presenting too much of a problem. The mountains reminded me of the Andes; the view was pretty spectacular. It was challenging and well worth it. ... read more