Tiger Leaping Gorge

The Lonely Planet describes Tiger Leaping Gorge thus "File a trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge under the category 'things that probably won't kill you but could'."  This naturally made us a little apprehensive and we thought we might give it a miss.  However, after chatting with an (admittedly slightly odd) English chap at the hostel in Lijiang we decided to give it a go (his name was John and he seemed to be the lacky at the hostel where Mama Naxi would order him order him around - he had also developed this very strange broken English which had no doubt been developed from years of travelling speaking to people who did not speak English as a first language).  Turns out that the Lonely Planet deserves the "Alarmist of the Year" award for its description.  The description goes on "the path constricts and crumbles".  Having now done the trek, I interpret this as meaning "the path is not made of concrete".

We were so glad we did the trek - it really is brilliant.  It's one of the world's highest gorges and you can look down on the mighty Yangtze as you go.  We stayed the night at the wonderfully named Tea Horse Guesthouse (tea and horses being the main things which were traded in the area), which had fabulous views out on to the mountains surrounding the gorge.  We got chatting to Christian and Annie, an Austrian-French Canadian couple who had just come back from Mongolia.  It sounds like the infrastructure there is a little underdeveloped.  They had 17 hours on a bus where the road was so bumpy that Annie (who could be no more than 5 foot 5) was bouncing up and down so much her head hit the ceiling repeatedly.  They were also saying that in the capital every car is a taxi.  You just stick your hand out and whoever is driving past will likely stop and take you where you wanna go.  Our conversation was supplemented by comments from a Korean chap who had relatively limited English - his phrases being restricted to "China alcohol very good" and, relating to treks, "Nepal number 1, India number 2, China number 3".

The next morning, we got up a bit later than the others staying at our guesthouse, which meant that we had the gorge to ourselves, which was great.  We spent the whole day wondering when the dangerous bit was going to appear and it never did - the worst there was was crossing a couple of waterfalls and that was just fun.