Tiger Leaping Gorge

The Tiger Leaping Gorge is one of the “must-see” places in Yunnan Province- a very deep gorge which you can hike along.

Because it’s so popular (especially with foreigners more than the large domestic tourism industry here),  it’s very easy to do the 2 day walk. The hostel books seats for you on a bus, which drops you at the start of the trail. Then it’s a walk along the trail to on the the guesthouses on the way for the night. A short walk the next morning takes you to Tina’s- a guesthouse at the end of the trail whose main function seems to be as the meeting place for the buses back to town at 3.30pm.. While waiting for the bus there’s time to clamber down to the river and back up again. At the river you can see the rock that was supposedly involved in the naming of the gorge. I think the general gist is that back in the day a tiger supposedly leaped across the river to escape some hunters..

I walked the trail with a Canadian I met on the bus called Lauren. It was good to have someone in my photos (other than my bike!). We stayed at a place called the Five Fingers Mountain Guesthouse- it was an interesting place- run by a couple who spoke no English, we were the only guests. They cooked a great dinner for us, and we had some homemade corn brandy for dessert! As I mentioned- the next day it was down to Tina’s and the river. Coming back up we took a different trail- one that involved a heap of ladders. From what I could gather from the sign there were 168 rungs in total. It definitely paid not to look too closely at the movement of the anchors “holding” the ladders to the rock! At least it was faster and easier than walking back up the steep trail.

It was a great couple of days- good to be hiking again! Unfortunately I left my rather pricey Petzl headtorch at the guesthouse and I’ve been hanging out in Lijiang for over a week hoping to get it back! I’ll write a post about my time here later, but I’m planning on leaving tomorrow regardless and cutting my losses.

Here are the photos from the trip- I struggle to pick my favourites so you get all of them! :-)

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