Leaping Tiger

20 hours to Kunming, 11 hours to Lijiang, 3 hours to Qiaotou…what, you may wonder, is worth all that?? Our answer: the Tiger Leaping Gorge. After spending one quick night in Lijiang, which has a cool old town area that we would spend some more time exploring on the other end of our hike, we wasted no time in waking early and heading out to Qiaotou, one of two towns that are used as the jumping off point for the Tiger Leaping Gorge. We arrived just after 10am and were greeted by an energetic Aussie guesthouse proprietress at the start of the trail. She offered us hikers some advice for the trail, such as where the confusing parts of the path were and to avoid the crazy old woman at the top of the ridge who throws rocks at people. Okkkkkkkk, this may be more challenging than we thought! Luckily, we snuck past her without incident and enjoyed the amazing views of the gorge and the surrounding mountains.

Rounding one of the 23 bends

A stop for lunch at the Naxi house. Corn anyone?

We stayed overnight at a guesthouse halfway through the gorge (aptly named the Halfway Guesthouse) which had a deck overlooking the gorge and mountains and an absolutely ridiculous view, where we enjoyed some great food and well-deserved drinks with a group of fellow hikers.

The Halfway deck

The second day of the hike turned out to be more challenging than the first as we hiked down the gorge to the bottom and back up to reach the end of the trail. This part of the hike was not only difficult because of the steep incline/declines, but it also required us to climb a 60-foot tall ladder rigged up with bamboo and chicken wire to get over a rocky section of the trail. If we had a serious fear of heights, this would not be a good time to find out!

Near the bottom of the middle gorge

Dangerous ladder, safe path...decisions, decisions...

Probably if the sign had been at the bottom instead of the top,

we wouldn't have picked the "dangerous ladder"!

After we finished the hike, we flagged down a bus to take us back to Lijiang where we spent the night in the old town. We got to try some more of the delicious Yunnanese specialties, including skewers of yak meat and yak butter tea (which tastes a bit like fragrant, salty cheese and is surprisingly tasty).