The Gorge the Tiger Leapt

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Not quite, but the Chinese do have some fanciful names. So now that we finally are in our own place and have the internet (at last1) I can resume the tale of our travels.

I left you in China in Lijang. This is where we'll briefly resume before showing you the picturesque Tiger Leaping Gorge.

This has just taken me 2 hours (those pics take an age to load - so you'll have to wait for the next installment before you can see the amazing Tibetan faces of Zhongdian.

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Photos

Village shot
A beautiful village we visited on a day-long bicycle trip from Lijang.

10,000 flower Camellia
This tree, over 500 years old, is not one, but 2 camellias twined together in the 1400s. So important was this tree that during all the troubles when the communist regime took over a monk used his own water rations to keep the tree alive. Would you do that today? He must have lived on something as we saw him there on our visit. A beautiful tree.

Sunset over Lijang
View from above our room at the Lijang Backpackers. They may have squat toilets (that DO NOT take toilet paper Brendon), but do have a great view over the village.

Dusk in Lijang
The beautiful village glows at night - and Iris conrtibuted with her own candle lantern sent down the stream through the village - to celebrate her birthday.

Packing us in - Again
You know you're in Asia when they cram you into vehicles like sardines. We thought that 6 of us hiring a van would be the way to go. We were wrong. This was not the nicest vehicle for a 3 hour journey through the mountains - espeically as the boot couldn't fit a single pack. The driver had packed most of them on the front seat which was fine for about 1 minute until he turned the first bend & was crushed by an avalanche of bags. We then insisted we moved them & the ended up under our feet & on our knees.

Rice paddies in the mountains
The weirdest thing about hiking through the seemingly remote landscape of Tiger Leaping Gorge was the villages that appeared around a bend - and the rice paddies and farm animals that went with them. It kind of made a mockery of our efforts - and the remoteness of the landscape.

Would you take a look at that!
David, Brendon Iris (Lisa in front of her) & Carston admiring the view - and our route for the tramp through the Gorge.
To get an idea of scale, the tallest peak of the mountains in the distance is 6800M.

A Goat herd with one of his flock
Another person who makes us realise that this tramp isn't remote as we feel it ought to be. And perhaps we're not as intrepid as we thought... He climbs these hills all year rounds with his herd.

Ahhhh This is the life
DO you think it'll catch on in NZ? No huddles over a hexiburner stove cooking some boiled rice in the freezing & steadliy darkening night for us tourists. NO, we get to stay at lovely villages on the path. As in most of China where we stayed Electricity is not used nor is it needed. We arrived, hot & thirsty, to be given lovley cool drinks of our favourite brands, a cup of green tea & some snacks while theowners prepared dinenrs over the brazier. The only power line in the village was to this guest house & it stopped working shortly after dark in any case - good thing we had torches. Here we are chilling out beside some corn, hung up to dry in the sun.

Hey! We're above the clouds!
Brendon & Lisa get excited that we're starting the 2nd day of our tramp above cloud level. David's not quite sure & Carston acts like this is all in a day's work.

Wow!
We've reached the crest & are on our way down. Checkout this view down to the gorge.

Cor Blimey!
Some pretty impressive landscape. Funnily enough its the closest to NZ scenery I've seen since we left home.

Brendon's going round the bend
Yup. That's his blue pack disappearing from view.

Ponies!
If you enlarge this picture, not only will you see the beautiful mountain ponies being driven along by the man at the rear, but also the many paddy fields in the distance.

More beautiful scenery
This waterfall looks amazing. Once more, to get an idea of scale, enlarge the photo and zoom in where the fall crosses the path. Doen that? Good, Now zoom in again and again. Finally you will see a tiny Brendon as he crosses the water fall.

I'm getting wet!
Smiling like a cherub, I'm standing under a branch of that same waterfall.

An outhouse with a view
This is probably this nicest location for a toilet I've seen. Period. The back of the toilets is wide open so you can glance out over the valley. What you can't see is the building behind where we stayed - the owner's home. It burned down 4 days before we arrived (luckily here sleeping children managed to wake & escape to safety) - due to faulty wiring. The wiring in our room (as it was for every building we visited on the whole tramp) was a single wire to a bare bulb hanging down. That too stopped part way through the night & they hadn't got any power running again by breakfast. Lucky they only use power for us guests - we were still able to have a breakfast cooked over their traditional stoves.