Tiger Leaping Gorge

Rhys (the Aussie I met at Lijiang) and I catch the last bus headed for Shangri-La and hop off at Qiatou to spend the night and start the gorge trek early. Most people tend to leave their main pack behind and walk with their day pack, but since mine’s only 10kg and because I want to do a four day hike, I take my pack with me.

While it would be nice and easy to take one of these horses up the mountain, it would no longer be hiking.

The views along the trek are amazing and we stop often to take photos. The most difficult part of the trek, known as the 28 bends is just before the Tea Horse Guest House where we spend the night – we were recommended to stay in the half way house but had met other trekkers who’d told us they are currently doing construction work early in the morning.

It’s here that I start making panorama photos of the places we visit.

The view from the guesthouse where we spend the night.

In the morning, another group of trekkers join us and we proceed to finish the final few hours of the trek.

Left to Right: Michel and Sandra from Holland, Rhys from Australia, Yours Truly and Fanny from Sweden.

As per my sister’s recommendation, I take a photo from the toilet of the Halfway Guesthouse, the owner thinks nothing of it when I ask him where the toilets are and go in with my camera.

No trek is complete without the obligatory waterfall shot.

We complete the trek with blistering pace and my trekking group go their separate ways. I wait at the bottom for David, an Israeli fellow I’d met earlier in Lijiang as we’d decided to do the four day trek towards Baishuitai.