BEST HIKING EVER. From Lijiang City, I rode a rickety minivan about 40 miles north to Yunnan Province’s Tiger Leaping Gorge, a contender for the world’s deepest river canyon. Several miles away from Qiaotou, where the gorge trail starts, our tiny minivan was sideswiped by a huge tourist bus. We spun sideways into the middle of the road. Our driver was livid, yelling at the other driver and demanding compensation (or so it seemed, not that I could understand any of the Chinese cursing). A cop finally showed up to write up an accident report, and in all we spent an hour on the side of the road.
It would not be the last car accident in China, nor did yelling, screaming, shouting, and bartering seem an abnormal way to resolve a traffic accident here.
Once in Qiaotou, I dropped my huge backpacking bag at Jane’s Guesthouse near the trailhead. A wooden sign pointed toward a small goat trail through the rear garden, which led up a trail out of town. And so the hike began in the late morning, a long bus ride and near-accident behind me. I was more than ready to start burning off my Naxi-style breakfast of yak cheese, yak meat, hardboiled eggs, and a roll.
A narrow dirt trail trodden by donkeys and littered with poo quickly wound up the west side of the gorge to 2,300 meters elevation. The view opened up: miles and miles and miles of purple, orange, and green countryside sweeping beneath a wispy blue sky. The view lasted for two days while I hiked about 22 km (14 miles) along the length of the gorge.
I stopped for lunch at the Naxi Family guesthouse and had potato pumpkin soup. That afternoon, I hiked up the 28 notorious bends of the so-called high road. Locals with their donkeys stood by at the tough spots, ready to offer the tired tourist a ride up the hill for a fee.
We spent the night in a wood cabin overlooking the valley, drinking the local Dali beer and eating freeze-dried Chinese noodles with a pack of tourists (Americans, Aussies, and Germans mostly) at the tiny cliffside village’s inn that night. Our Naxi host made sure the beers kept flowing. Several 5,000 meter peaks loomed above us. The sun set behind the peaks and the moon rose and several puffs of cloud floated out of the valley. A wind crept up into the cabin and I bundled into my pants and sweatshirt. The chill felt great! The ache in my legs and back felt rewarding. Another beer, a game of pitch, and chapter of The Brothers Karamazov completed the night.
This quote seemed apt that night, from The Grand Inquisitor: “So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find some one to worship. But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it.”
The next morning I hiked out of camp early, before anyone else awoke, and walked several miles in the cool air to the next guesthouse for coffee and breakfast of eggs and pancakes. My mug had a little chickadee bird beak. My seat was a tree trunk. I sat on the deck of the guesthouse and ate at a stone table overlooking the valley and the spectacular cliffs rising straight up the other side of the gorge, the sun beams shooting down between the peaks and warming my skin. The only thing wrong was the nearby French and Dutch couples arguing about whether swine flu was invented by Big Pharma.
From there, the path wound down all the way to the raging gorge. I got lost a few times amid the thickets, and at one point a branch hit my glasses off my head and into the brush. I was frantic. I am blind without my glasses. Claire started laughing. “Claire, it’s not funny, stop laughing! I can’t see!” She laughed harder, pitifully trying to stifle her chuckles. “Claire!” She managed to hold it in until we found my glasses, but thereafter could crack herself up by saying in a nerdy voice (think of Ralph from The Simpsons): “Help me, I lost my glasses! It’s not funny! Claire, it’s not funny!”
Sometimes I wonder if I am here just to entertain her.
We climbed down to the Yangtze River, where according to legend a tiger once leaped the gorge to escape hunters, but where stupid tourists now drown as they attempt to brave the waters and instead get swept into the rapids.
After hiking the length of the gorge, we caught a bus ride back to Jane’s Guesthouse. The place was said, according to my guidebook, to be nice and friendly, and I guess it was in a totally non-confrontational and laissez-faire way. But the staff was also annoyingly out-to-lunch. The two young female staffers slept on a couch almost the entire afternoon. I had to practically shake them awake and shout “I want food!” to get a meal. This morning, after knocking and knocking for 10 minutes, I finally just barged into the staff’s sleeping quarters so that I could, merely, pay the bill.
That’s fairly typical of service so far in China. Which is another reason why it was nice for several days to be away from people, trekking above the Yangtze river and below 5,200-meter-high peaks.
