Yunnan vacation: Tiger Leaping Gorge

Day 3
The driver of our mini bus was late, but that gave me time to check out the people I’d be sweating alongside for the next 2 days. It might have been a wiser decision to eat breakfast, but I wasn’t hungry and generally lack foresight.

If folks were congregated in the common area at 8 am, it was pretty obvious that they were going gorging. There were 2 other couples, which was fine, as long as they were around to acknowledge my existence in case anything bad did happen to me.

When the mini-bus finally made it, it was full of other people. the driver assured us that they weren’t going very far, so I think we managed to cram about 10 people in a mini bus that holds 7 (aside from the driver). because I wasn’t in a couple, I didn’t have to sit on anyone’s lap or have anyone sit on mine. But I had to ride shotgun, which is not a promising place to be in china. A lot of space, true, but you also have a too-clear visual of exactly what’s happening on the road outside of that window. And exactly what’s happening in the seat next to you, which is a Chinese driver. Driving and multi-tasking are encouraged. Also, a lot of times if you wear a seatbelt the driver considers it an insult. But I wore my seatbelt.

Took a lot of notes during the ride. It was too bumpy to do much else.

driver managed to change his cell phone battery while driving a stick shift. particularly impressive when going up mountain roads where people like to pass with reckless abandon.

Random cows tethered to trees by the side of the road, content despite their proximity to Chinese drivers.

A wreck on the way—told the driver that’s what happens when you talk on your cell phone and drive.

Military-inspired sweaters, olive green wellingtons and tools for manual labor: standard gear for all the men and women walking along the road, everyone with work and a “somewhere” in mind

Shadows from the clouds cast on the hills, mottled greens and greys scan slowly over the tree sea.

Fruit ladies set up on the back road, because someone will inevitably stop for amazing-looking peaches.

Trucks spitting out black smoke as they struggle with the incline. a smell reminiscent of 4th of july snakes. Little pellets smoking and hissing as they contort.

Incense, some sort of altar—candles haphazardly arranged in a semi-circle on the shoulder of the road. 5 men holding down a dog or a goat. visibility blurred, but the intent is clear.

Donkey/mule crossing though the muddy puddles in a washed out road. Slammed brakes. their keeper is in no hurry and seems to inspire that same ambivalence in their pace.

Gorge! Just get there already! The bus ride is taking longer than it was supposed to.

the last little village before we got to jane’s guesthouse was a trip! I haven’t seen shit like that since Tibet. Just the bustle and commerce and congestion of living bodies and all manner of motor vehicles vying for space in a place where there really isn’t any. Very cool.

We started from Jane’s guesthouse. There were puppies! Bought water. should have bought other provisions, but didn’t. again remembered that breakfast I hadn’t eaten earlier.

We (my mini bus companions: livia, ellie and david, yan and paul) initially overlooked the entrance to the trail, because it looked shady and there were a bunch of loitering types. You hear all kinds of horror stories about people scamming people or robbing people on the trail, so we were overly-cautious. The man who actually sold us our tickets at a very legitimate ticket office told us we were “too careful” when we asked for receipts for our tickets. That’s the shitty thing about china and a haggling culture. your instinct is to trust absolutely no one. So the response to the ticket vendor was “it’s necessary.”

We backtracked to the very small entrance to the high path (but there was a blue sign, yellow lettering), past the riff raff and headed up. I could immediately tell that this was going to kick my ass. I will say this: if/when you go, don’t take a backpack. Put all your shit in your pockets or make a friend carry your bag. Wear light running shoes. I think both of those things would have helped me tremendously. And no, you don’t need to pack a very large book! you won’t read it, unless you plan to stop and read along the trail, which you don’t. no one does that. But hey, my ankles were safe in my moon boot hiking shoes. Safe and heavy.

All excuses of course for why I took a mule up the most difficult part of the trek. Heh heh. No shame in a mule! It was only 80 rmb for about 2 hours. Riding the mule was as terrifying as the trek was difficult. Or maybe it was more terrifying. I was very happy that humans are the only mammals with suicidal tendencies, because there were definitely some times when that mule wanted to end it all. He just didn’t know it. and getting used to the rhythmic jostling of an animal is difficult when you can’t recall the last time you sat in a saddle. The path at that point was a lot of loose rocks, too, so I was second-guessing every step this animal made. Looking down these sheer cliffs from at least 5 feet higher than I would have been walking. Could quite possibly be the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done.

So I’m sitting on the mule, but the mule is being led by a man wearing an army jacket and the equivalent of k-mart off brand keds shoes. So he’s walking up the 28 steps fine, while I sit on his mule. Humbling, yes. But I told him he had to split the 80 rmb 50/50 with the mule. He insisted that he fed it well.

After the 28 steps, it was basically flat, except for that very slight incline up to the halfway house. Which also nearly killed me. My legs just weren’t in it. seriously, not even a hill, just an incline. By this point I was very aware of how sedentary my life in chongqing must be. Had I done this when I lived in hangzhou, I think I’d have nailed it. steady conditioning riding my bike everyday.

the path after 28 steps was quite different from the one before it--forest, pine trees and elm trees and all kinds of trees in the same space. Oddly enough it reminded me of rock bridge, or an amalgam of all the forests i’ve been to in America. a nice, inaccurate, vague bit of nostalgia, rooted in the senses of smell and touch.

halfway house was the goal for the first day—showers, really nice rooms, but no electricity. So a hot shower in the dark. after 8-ish hours of hiking, I didn’t really give a shit about whether I had light or not.

The woman at reception was being kind of cunty about people asking about electricity. But good food, great view, comradery I don’t usually experience/enjoy. Banter on the “inspiration terrace.”

some folks bought “tobacco” off an old woman on the trail, so the bunch I was with were all smoking, aside from me and the germans. someone asked what their names were (the germans) after they went to sleep, and one of the folks answered “dis and dat.” I thought that was hilarious. They’d just spent the whole day hiking with these folks, but had no idea what their names were. I was guilty of that to a certain degree…after a certain point it’s just too late to ask someone what their name is.

anyhoo, sitting in the dark with the light of the tobacco pipe and the mountains hovering in the background. Needless to say, it was very cool. there was a common bathroom. Each stall was 2 walls, 1 door. what would have been the back wall was just open, so you were enveloped by the mountains as you conducted your business.

To bed early. Try not to wake livia (shared a room).

At this point, I can’t wait until tomorrow to get to tina’s guest house at one of the “ends” of the trail. it was all anyone was talking about. There’s sposed to be good food. I’m banking on her having pizza.

Day 4
The second day of the gorge hike, I woke up early, feeling incredibly motivated. After doing the majority of the hike the day prior with a group of people, I thought I’d head out on my own, arrive at my happy zen feeling by myself. It was only two hours to tina’s and all the trails had been fairly well-marked up to this point, so I was confident I wouldn’t have any problems.

Chicken noodle soup and coffee for breakfast. As I was leaving, all the peeps from the day before were waking up. told them I’d just meet them at tina’s and we could get some beers together before we all headed in different directions.

So I head out of the halfway house, and see 2 trails. One is very wide, one is not very wide. I opt for the very wide and start my hike for the day. The very large trail heads pretty sharply downhill, which seemed right, because everyone had said that tina’s was all downhill after the halfway house. Cool. So I head down, and this trail that had been very wide started to get thinner and thinner, and more and more unkempt, and more and more immersed in a corn field. I followed the trail to a precipice where it stopped, so I stopped. At this point I thought “I don’t feel comfortable doing this by myself.” I think I actually said that out loud. so I turned around and headed back up the hill. For fuck’s sake. Figured I’d meet back up with my peeps and just go with them. then we could at least all feel uncomfortable and/or slightly unsafe together.

When I was nearly back to where I started, I saw another guy bouncing along down the hill toward me. At this point, I was relieved, not because there was another human, but because his existence meant that there was less of a chance that I’d fucked up and gone the wrong way. So he approaches me and asks me about the trail. he just so happened to be a very very attractive man, a jon hamm doppelganger with a Spanish accent. And here he was, helping me. He seemed like a bona fide hiker type, in that he had a topographical map (ooh, fancy…) and was wearing a hat. Yeah, that’s right, a hat. He also said that my shoes weren’t appropriate for this sort of hiking (I was wearing my chaco’s at this point, not the moon shoes). I quite enjoyed being scolded by spanish jon hamm.

Anyway, told him I turned around because I was less than confident in my navigation. He pointed to the map and said it was the right way. And I believed him. and felt relieved. I’m not an idiot! So he said he’d head down to the point where I stopped, figure out the trail from there and then wave me down to join him. sweet.

So jon hamm hops on down the hill and gets to where I’d stopped. He looks back up at me and points, like “the trail continues here.” so I followed him. And it didn’t even matter that I’d had to turn around and walk up what was ultimately the steepest hiking of the trek for me (made up for that mule the day before). Because now I was on my way. Yay! At this point another family had started making their way down the hill. And they looked as confused and unsure as I’d felt when jon hamm found me. So I waved them down encouragingly: “it’s okay, we’ve got a fearless, attractive leader who completely knows what he’s doing.” That’s a lot to convey with a hand gesture, but I think I did.

When I got down to where he’d waved me down, he was gone. He’d just disappeared. I yelled, I looked but there was no sight or sound of him. fuck. I didn’t even know his name to yell anything accurately.

I started to frantically wave to the other family to stop coming down the hill. I didn’t really know what to do at this point, so I climbed back up the steepest part of the trek to meet the family halfway. They were a family of 4 guatemalans and 1 girl from Colombia. My central/south American family for the rest of the day. The daughter in the group spoke very very good English and very very good Chinese. So she figured out directions from a farmer. She also promised to help me make some sort of report about jon hamm’s disappearance.

The father looked very very much like ernest hemingway. Lucia (tri-lingual daughter) said he got that all the time. They were amazing humans though. She’d been living in Beijing for 8 years as a graphic designer. It was just very cool to be surrounded by Spanish-speaking people for a change. A beautiful language!

So we headed up the hill again together (this was the second time I’d gone all the way down and then come back up). I felt very bad to make these folks in their 60s turn around and head back up a hill. Very very bad. Plus the chick from Colombia was only wearing some fashionable gladiator sandals with basically no sole. She hadn’t planned on coming to the gorge and just sort of ended up on the mini-bus in a “what the hell, why not” moment. But we got to the top and I traded her shoes. She put on my chacos (that were several sizes too big) and I went back to my hiking moon shoes. At that point the farmer had confirmed the correct way to the trail, so off we went.

We had to cross some waterfalls, but ultimately it was a pretty easy 2 or so hours to tina’s. rough on the knees, but at least it wasn’t uphill. And in 2 days we didn’t get rained on.

Made it to tina’s. no pizza. Goddamnit! But they had beer.

Ran into my friends from the day before who had left after me. They were confused by why I was just arriving. Explained what happened and then remembered “shit, jon hamm!” so lucia and I talked to the front desk of tina’s and tried to get them to communicate with the other guest houses along the trail and keep a look out for a hiker who matched jon hamm’s description. That was all we could do, but my conscience felt a little clearer.

We got some grub, waited out the rain that finally caught up with us and then headed down to middle tiger leaping gorge. This is the part of the trek with all the insane, dangerous Chinese shit. It’s also how you get down to the tiger leaping stone, from whence the legend of the gorge came.

The map said “2 hours.” Bullshit, like everything on the map, this was another time that was grossly underestimated. Sure, it takes an hour to go straight downhill, but when you come back it’s straight up. this was actually some of the steepest hiking we did in the whole trip, and it was listed as just sort of an afterthought. Anyhoo, we made our way down. When we approached the first vertical ladder on the trail, I said “I don’t have to do this.” I watched 7 other people go down the thing before me, and I still couldn’t do it. I think I was still too freaked out by jon hamm’s disappearance to bring myself to climb down a ladder in china nailed to a vertical wall. So my central/latin American family forged on without me. I turned around and walked back up. brutal, but I had no backpack. Significantly easier. I got to the top and waited for my fam.

While I was waiting, some other folks from the halfway house made their way back up. they showed me photos of what I missed after the first ladder, which was apparently a very very sheer cliffface with a wire for a rope and another ladder with about 30 steps to it. I felt happy with my decision to give up when I did. One of the overriding themes of any of my vacations is “don’t die.”

Family made it back up and we headed back to lijiang. Lucia had arranged for a private van to take us back because the last bus to lijiang left at 4. we left at 7. when I finally got back to lijiang, they’d given my garden inn room away. Because they also knew that the last bus left at 4, so I theoretically should have arrived by 7. when I didn’t (despite the fact that my large backpack was there and I’d already paid for the room), they gave my room away. Instead of being happy to see that I was alive they said “oh, we thought you weren’t coming.” Because the alternative to me arriving was that I was dead. At least that’s how I read it in my exhausted, dirty state.

But they moved me to another inn about 50 feet away.
Moral of this story: tiger leaping gorge…DO IT! but remember, no backpacks, no moonboots hiking shoes. and if you don't want to climb a ladder or you do want to take a mule up the difficult parts, don't let anybody be a dick about it.