Ahead of the three-day trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan Province, I packed three important things: my boots, my camera and my book.
While on a group tour of Yunnan Province I have been reading Michael Palin’s Himalaya book. I never leave home without at least one book and I try to keep my reading material relevant to my surrounds.
I thought it would be cool to read Mr Palin’s account of Yunnan, and particularly Tiger Leaping Gorge, while travelling there. I spent the evening ploughing through the rest of the chapter on Tibet so I can start reading the Tiger Leaping Gorge bit at the precise time that I’m in Tiger Leaping Gorge myself. Not anal at all am I? Maybe it’s best if you don’t answer that.
Day 1
Our Tiger Leaping Gorge trek began with a three hour bus transfer from Lijiang – a lovely but very touristy historic Yunnan town. You can’t move for being harassed to buy some kind of touristy trinket.
Arriving at the starting point for the trek we picked up our local guide, Frankie. He will lead us for the three day two night trek. He is also the owner/operator of the Halfway Guest House where we will stay on the second night.
For a warm up we took a whole load of steps down to the river level from the car park to view the ‘tiger leaping stone’ in the centre of the river. From here we could see the statue of the tiger up on the cliff and we learned the story of the gorge.
The legend of Tiger Leaping Gorge is a tiger leaped across it to escape a hunter. He landed on this stone halfway across the river and bounded off it to safety on the other side.
Tiger Leaping Gorge, a canyon of the Jinsha River, is around 60 kilometres long. The trek itself is around 22 kilometres. It’s famous for its scenery. But, the hydro potential has the gorge earmarked for a dam. It may be flooded and all the guesthouses and the families operating them displaced. We may very well be among the last to experience this hike. (Ed: a year later Yunnan Province abandoned plans to dam Tiger Leaping Gorge and it was saved, as reported here by the South China Morning Post in 2007).
After taking pictures and climbing back up all those stairs we began our trek. Today’s section was a simple walk along a road for about 11 kilometres to our first stop at Tina’s guest house, our accommodation for the evening.
I retired with my book to read up to the start of the part about Tiger Leaping Gorge.
Day 2
My first day hiking with Mr Palin and I’m afraid we’ve already had a row. He includes Tiger Leaping Gorge in his journey through the Himalaya, yet Frankie insists that the mountains surrounding the gorge, including the famed Jade Dragon Snow Mountains, are not part of the Himalaya. He’s adamant the Himalaya is ‘away in Tibet.’ Hmmm. (Ed: According to Wikipedia the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain massif forms part of the larger Yulong Mountains range.)
Anyway, today we did two relatively short but tough hikes with Frankie. First up this morning, we hiked down to the river at Middle Tiger Leaping Gorge and then back up to Tina’s via a horrifying contraption called the ‘Sky Ladder.’
As its name suggests this is a ladder some enterprising locals have set into the cliff face to provide a short cut back out of the gorge. It wasn’t too scary, until I nearly fell off the edge of the cliff.
The enterprising locals could do with installing some sort of fencing at the top. I stood up after stepping off the ladder a little wobbly and stumbled dangerously close to the side of the clifftop. Thankfully Frankie nudged me back away from the edge. The last bit of the hike was a real uphill trudge back to Tina’s.
After a lunch stop there it was back out for the 5-6 kilometre hike to Halfway House. The trail climbed around 500 metres over the journey, giving us quite a workout.
I settled into a chair at Halfway House with a stunning view to continue with Mr Palin’s account. I discovered that he had in fact stayed at Halfway House during his journey and met Frankie. He described Frankie as cadaverous and gave the toilet here a top ranking for having one of the best views from a toilet anywhere in the world (Ed: He was right about the toilet view.)
I pointed out to Frankie that he and his guest house were in my book. I expected an “oh yes that thing again”, reaction but I got a big surprise. While he remembered Palin and his crew coming, he had not seen the book before and was very surprised and excited by it; so much so that he snaffled it and spent the next half hour running around showing it to his family and staff before returning it.
I have decided that I will give Frankie the book before we leave in the morning. Having seen how happy it made him to see it, I can’t bring myself to take it away.
I sat up in bed quite late finishing the Yunnan chapter. I guess it’s fitting that I leave reading the book after the Yunnan chapter since that’s what I had it for. I’ll get myself another copy at home and read the rest another time.
Day 3
I presented Frankie with my copy of Himalaya this morning after breakfast and he was very pleased. I wrote him a little note inside the front cover. It made me happy to give it to him.
I am now bookless for the rest of the trip, a status I have never found myself in while travelling before.
We walked the high road out of Tiger Leaping Gorge this morning. It felt like about 10 kilometres and was mostly a moderate hike with 30-45 minutes uphill sections that were not too steep
We stopped for lunch at a Naxi family’s guest house and then descended back towards the car park where we started from. As usual, I found the descent much tougher than the ascent and my knees and calves were pretty tired at the end of it and I was glad to be back on the bus.
We said goodbye to Frankie at the bottom. I think he is one of the most interesting people I have ever met while travelling. He works very hard and loves what he does. He has taught himself a good level of English simply by chatting to English backpackers and with no formal instruction.
His vocabulary includes phrases like ‘Lovely Jubbly’ and ‘Smashing’ thanks to British backpackers. He now knows ‘no worries’ too thanks to us.