Lijiang & the Tiger Leaping Gorge, China, Asia
9 hours from Kunming is the beautiful quaint town of Lijiang. Unfortunately our time here was purely a whistle stop before heading onto the Tiger Leaping Gorge, and so as soon as we got of the bus it was straight into the endless cobbled streets within the Old Town.
Having structurely survived an earthquake in 1996, (hitting the richter scale of 7 and kiiling 300 people, injuring 16,000), the UN made Lijiang a World Heritage site in 1999, which has meant that today the town is flooded with Chinese tourists and no longer a haunt for backpackers as it once was.
We had 1 evening to stroll around the maze of streets buying any souveniers that took our fancy before heading to the gorge the next day,
The Tiger Leaping Gorge - where the Yangzi River flows between the Haba Mountain and Yulong Xueshan, and through one of the deepest gorges in the world. The length of the gorge reaches 16km whilst the highest peak hits 3,000 metres. We begun our trek up the gorge a little late in the day after the unfortunate event of our bus breaking down which meant that we were climbing during the hottest part of the day. With no shade, this was quite tough but the majority of us were determined to reach the peak as planned by sunset.
We reached our 1st halfway mark at 4pm, and still had another 3 hours to go. The next 3 hours were going to be the toughest has it took in 28 bends which were steep and winding. With the time constraint and wanting to make it to the peak and then down to our guesthouse before nightfall, I made friend with 'Mavis' - my trusted mule who helped me reach the peak in good time.
All throughout the trek the scenery was spectacular! The Yangzi River wound itself through the rugged gorge with snowcapped mountains surrounding the place - simply beautiful! Once we reached the peak of the trail, we descending for one hour before reaching our guesthouse where we sat and watched the mountains change colour as the sun went down and the moon came up.
The 2nd day of the trek was mainly flat which some steep descending, however, the scenery on the this day was ever changing with each twist and turn of the gorge. Stunning, stunning, stunning, and definitely rates as best scenery in the whole of my Asian jaunt. With the trekking being relativelty easy on this day we were able to take our time and just marvel at the sight before us.
We had heard throughout the 2 days that there had been 3 landslides at the bottom of the gorge blocking the road out, and so there was always the possibility that we would have to do the trek again to get back to where we started to catch a bus out. However, we were all keen to assessed the seriousness of the landslides rather than taking the back tracking option. On the 3rd day we took a bus to the 1st landslide, and we were all taken a back by how big the landslide was. Still keen to keep moving forward and not head up the gorge again, we held our bottle, remembered to move quickly to avoid the falling rumble and never looked down!! For on our left hand side was just a sheer drop into the Yangzi River. 1st landslide over, and all over the other side successfully, we then had to clamber over the 2nd one which for me was the most scary - still we all survived but agreed that we wouldn't like to have to do that again!
Having structurely survived an earthquake in 1996, (hitting the richter scale of 7 and kiiling 300 people, injuring 16,000), the UN made Lijiang a World Heritage site in 1999, which has meant that today the town is flooded with Chinese tourists and no longer a haunt for backpackers as it once was.
We had 1 evening to stroll around the maze of streets buying any souveniers that took our fancy before heading to the gorge the next day,
The Tiger Leaping Gorge - where the Yangzi River flows between the Haba Mountain and Yulong Xueshan, and through one of the deepest gorges in the world. The length of the gorge reaches 16km whilst the highest peak hits 3,000 metres. We begun our trek up the gorge a little late in the day after the unfortunate event of our bus breaking down which meant that we were climbing during the hottest part of the day. With no shade, this was quite tough but the majority of us were determined to reach the peak as planned by sunset.
We reached our 1st halfway mark at 4pm, and still had another 3 hours to go. The next 3 hours were going to be the toughest has it took in 28 bends which were steep and winding. With the time constraint and wanting to make it to the peak and then down to our guesthouse before nightfall, I made friend with 'Mavis' - my trusted mule who helped me reach the peak in good time.
All throughout the trek the scenery was spectacular! The Yangzi River wound itself through the rugged gorge with snowcapped mountains surrounding the place - simply beautiful! Once we reached the peak of the trail, we descending for one hour before reaching our guesthouse where we sat and watched the mountains change colour as the sun went down and the moon came up.
The 2nd day of the trek was mainly flat which some steep descending, however, the scenery on the this day was ever changing with each twist and turn of the gorge. Stunning, stunning, stunning, and definitely rates as best scenery in the whole of my Asian jaunt. With the trekking being relativelty easy on this day we were able to take our time and just marvel at the sight before us.
We had heard throughout the 2 days that there had been 3 landslides at the bottom of the gorge blocking the road out, and so there was always the possibility that we would have to do the trek again to get back to where we started to catch a bus out. However, we were all keen to assessed the seriousness of the landslides rather than taking the back tracking option. On the 3rd day we took a bus to the 1st landslide, and we were all taken a back by how big the landslide was. Still keen to keep moving forward and not head up the gorge again, we held our bottle, remembered to move quickly to avoid the falling rumble and never looked down!! For on our left hand side was just a sheer drop into the Yangzi River. 1st landslide over, and all over the other side successfully, we then had to clamber over the 2nd one which for me was the most scary - still we all survived but agreed that we wouldn't like to have to do that again!
posted by Lou @ 2:05 am
1 comments
1 Comments:
Gidday Lou,
Cool, your description of Tiger Leaping Gorge has better history, facts and figures than I found anywhere else.
A uni mate met me at Heathrow, so its all good over here, have the tubes sussed, found more than 1 Walkabout already and am suprised by the sheer number and mutliculturalness of people in London. Being a tourist for a wee while longer. Warm here so Green Park was full of guys with their shirts off, even whiter than Jimbo!!! Have fun in Asia.
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