Day 5 – “What is this ‘happy’ you speak of?”

After a blissful night’s sleep on top of the mountain and banana pancakes for breakfast, we decided to hit the trail.  But first we needed to admire the ‘sunrise.’  Sunrise here is much later than in eastern China (because all of China is one timezone. Don’t ask.)

View from our hostel. 🙂 It was awesome!

For a while the trail was a slow descent with beautiful views.  The views really kept getting better.  The trail creeped around the mountain, always with the sheer drop to the river on the right.  This day was harder for me just because of the fear of heights thing…  Around each corner there were new surprises.  One particular stretch held a special challenge for me.

Yes, this is a waterfall cutting right through the trail.

So, I had two options: I could walk on the very edge where there was about a 6-inch wide dry patch, or I could get my feet a little wet and stay away from the edge. (do you see the water cascading over the edge...yikes!) My shoes got a little wet. 🙂

I did eventually make it past the waterfall (which was my favorite and least favorite part) and we continued on.  The people at the hostel told us that it would take about two hours to reach the low road (the road for cars driving through the gorge).  I kept thinking in my head, “we are really high. How in the world are we going to reach the road in such a short distance and such a short time?”  Ummm…let’s go STRAIGHT DOWN!  Shortly after the waterfall there were the second 28 bends (not actually what they were called but basically straight down rock climbing–with a little bit of back and forth.)  I hated this part.  I was definitely using my hands more.  And I was developing a rather large blister near my right big toe. 

After our 1.5 hour descent (yep, it was actually quicker) we stopped along the road to wait for two of our travel buddies.  We decided that we would leave them a note at the guesthouse and continue down the road another 30 minutes to the place where we planned to eat lunch.  This place is known for it’s “Happy Tea.”  Actually, it’s not really ‘known’ because the owner would probably be in Chinese jail somewhere.  Some of my companions wanted to eat there so they could try happy tea.  I opted out of “happy tea” because, believe it or not, I don’t actually want to be deported.  On the menu you could add “happy” to anything for 6元. That’s about $1.  It was crazy.  It was here that we rented a minibus back to Qiaotou.  Funny–it only took about an hour to drive through the gorge! 

Upon returning to Qiaotou, we said goodbye to two friends who were continuing on to Shangri-la.  The rest of us were heading back to Lijiang to enjoy Mama Naxi’s family meal at one of the hostels. The meal was delicious and the company was great!  I opted out of the after-supper-bar-hopping idea in favor of some good sleep!  Definitely a wise choice! 🙂 

This was actually taken during the hike on the first day. 🙂 This was day three of getting sunburned. The river was beautiful!

Day 4 – “Is that a bird in the car?”

The plan was to catch a minibus at our hostel at 8:30 to take us to the village of Qiaotou.  Of course, we are in China and plans never work the way you want them to. 

I had gotten everything ready the night before so that I could enjoy my sleep, (I’m on vacation after all) and also be ready for the 24 km hike I was about to embark upon.  I set my alarm for 8:00.  I actually woke up at 6:15. 🙁  One thing I did not like about the hostel where I stayed was the lack of “check-in” time.  There actually was a check-in time but it wasn’t really followed. If your train arrives in Lijiang at 5:45 am, you can go right to your hostel and check in for the following evening.  This is madness.  The woman from the desk (the crabby one) came into the room, turned the lights on, and made the bed (didn’t think to have this done the previous day?)for the newcomer.  Honestly, had it been me who was arriving at 6:00 am, I would have been grateful for the early morning nap in a bed (more on this later…)  It actually wouldn’t have been so bad if the girl who checked in that morning would have actually used the bed that the attendant so noisily prepared.  All this girl did was put her stuff in the room and go sit in the common room.  Okay…venting over…

We caught the minibus at 8:40 (it was late) and there was another person in it. Great! Another woman to hike with.  This woman (we guess) was approximately 65 years old.  The driver told us that he had to make another stop.  Okay…a little later start than what we wanted. I takes about 2.5 hours to drive from Lijiang to Qiaotou where the trailhead is.  The way this trip is headed, we’d be lucky to start the hike before noon. 

We arrived at the next hostel to pick up an unknown amount of people.  And we waited…and waited…and waited, until finally a group of five people crawled into another minibus and one more in our minibus.  All were going to hike the Tiger Leaping Gorge! There was Sarah: an MIT grad who majored in atomic physics and is currently doing research in China while improving her Chinese.  She was pretty cool. There was Mary: the previously mentioned 65-year-old-ish woman who is on a trip around the world to “say goodbye”…whatever that means. (no one asked…) There was Susanne: very young girl from Holland taking a “gap year” before going to college.  Mom–could you imagine me traveling around the world when I was 19? Ha!  There was Kendal: a 30-something teacher who runs her own tutoring center on the east coast. There were Jamie and Rachel: cousins (one American, one Canadian) who decided to spend 2ish months traveling around Asia.  This means that there were seven (I know…awesome!) women that were going to do the hike together.  Remember how I thought I would have no one to hike with…? Yeah. Slap me.

On our way out of Lijiang, our driver said he needed to give his son a ride somewhere. Okay. Whatever. We’re already running behind. It’s not like we need to make it to top before sunset or anything. So he stops to get his son and his son’s entourage (which included one large bird).

This is the rather large bird that found its way into our minibus. The driver's son was soon to be married so our only guess was that the bird was a gift for his future wife's family. Maybe you have a better guess. I was very happy after the bird found its way OUT of the vehicle. I like birds. When they're outside. 🙂

After all that nonsense was over, we found ourselves (finally) on the way to Qiaotou.  We arrived at a bridge.  This isn’t just an ordinary bridge.  I’m sure it has some special meaning in Chinese. The bridge belongs to no one. But–the side of the river that we are on belongs to Lijiang. The side that we want to be on belongs to Shangri-la. (If you’re wondering about that name…google it sometime. It was named that after the famous book Lost Horizon called it that.  These people love their attention for it! The city’s real name is Zhongdian)  So, when one side of the bridge belongs to one county and the other side belongs to another county, the only acceptable (and clearly the most obvious) way of doing things is to switch vehicles before crossing the bridge.  Lijiang cars do not drive in Shangri-la. Shangri-la cars do not drive in Lijiang. This is just the way it is. Please don’t ask. Good grief.

We made it to Qiaotou about 10 minutes later and found ourselves behind a 20-man (with suits and lanyards, of course) blockade.  These men had one important job: make sure the foreigners pay. (“Can you wear a suit? Can you smoke? Can you stop American women from hiking without paying? Hired!”–at least that what we assumed the interview sounded like.)   Hehehe….  We were told (THAT VERY MORNING) that there was not an entrance fee to the gorge because of the construction going on at the bottom.  (Apparantly, if you were willing to risk your life amid the dangerous rock blasting, you deserved to hike the gorge for free.)  This was not the case for the seven hikers that day.  We had to pay.  I’m going to call it a National Park Fee.  It makes me feel better.  More likely it would be going toward the wages of the men who created our barricade that day. 🙁 

I’ve rambled on and on, and I haven’t even gotten to the hike yet.  Need a bathroom break? Okay. I’ll wait.

We began the hike with three people following us.  Two were pulling donkeys with them.  We didn’t really know why they were following us until they started saying “Hello. Want to ride my horse?” (donkey=horse in this country)  (Another thing you should know about China is that when someone is trying to sell you something but they can’t speak English they will say, “Hello” followed by the name of the item they are selling. For example: “Hello, banana!” “Hello, scarf”–more on this later) So, since the donkey-keepers could at least make a (sort of) sentence…we let them continue following. It was definitely good to have them behind us when the direction of the trail was a bit iffy.  They saved us a bit of time during the beginning vague parts of the hike.  If you recall, time is something we are lacking in a bit today. 

So, finally, we are hiking the gorge!  It was my main reason for visiting this part of the country. I was loving it. I saw this:

We were barely into the hike (probably a couple kilometers) and no one could resist taking photos. It was absolutely gorgeous. Amber--stop taking pictures. We have to make it to the Halfway House (yep, that's the name) by sunset.

And this…

Amazing! So good to be in the mountains!

This picture was actually very close to the halfway point. (I just put it here for wow-factor)  “Jade Dragon Snow Mountain” (that’s right, all the mountains are called one mountain) is a very famous mountain in China and stands at just over 18,000 feet. 

There was one part of the hike that was pretty brutal.  It was called the 28 bends. (it was more like 35 or 40 though…)  This is where you cover a great deal of elevation in not so much distance.  Back and forth, back and forth almost straight up.  We began the bends (or so we thought…) only to find out 30 minutes later that we were just beginning the bends! AAAHHHH!!!  Yes, there was a sign telling us that we were about to begin the 28 bends.  Okay.  I can do this.  Susanne and I had gotten Snickers to eat when we reached the top.  That’s motivation, right?  So, we climbed and climbed and climbed and climbed and reached the number…. 1!  Well, this is interesting.  They didn’t actually count each bend but a group of bends… Aiya! (that’s the Chinese version of ‘good grief’ and I find myself saying it more and more…)  It did eventually get better and we stopped thinking about the numbers.  We finally got to the number 16 and decided that since we were ‘half way’ we could make it!  The next number we saw was 22.  24, 25, 26… And finally, we were there!  It was a good feeling.  The rest of the day’s hike was actually pretty easy. Good thing too, because we had to cover 16.5 kilometers on day one!

This is what the trail looked like for part of the hike. (With a steep drop at the right...)

This is what another part of the trail looked like. Again, with a sheer drop to the right.

...and a view from the edge of the cliff. 🙂

We made it to the Halfway House just as the sun was setting on the mountains across the gorge.  It was “gorge”ous!  Halfway House, our hostel for the night, was awesome!  The view from the squatty-potty was incredible.  The shower was HOT, the bed was very warm, the beer (definitely deserved) was cold, and the company was unbeatable!  I slept so well that night!

This was the view of the sunset on the mountains! Mmmm..... Totally worth the climb!