Travel Journal

Another great day in Lijiang! We awoke again to crystal blue skies and warm weather (probably about 70 degrees for the high?). Today, our plan involved walking around Old Town Lijiang, getting a few good minutes of video, breakfast at Prague Cafe, and finding out how to get to Tiger Leaping Gorge. Tiger Leaping Gorge is about 2 hours outside of Lijiang, on the backside of the mountains we visited yesterday - the Jade Dragon Snow Mountains. The depth of the gorge is 3900 meters, and supposedly is the deepest gorge in the world (I'm not sure about that...). Many people hike the gorge in about 4 days, but because we were pressed for time, we decided to make a day trip out of it instead.

Outside the bus station, we found a very friendly minibus driver and his wife who were saying "Qiaotou" which was the town we wanted to base our sightseeing from. We hopped in the minibus (we were the only ones) and off we went. Through gorgeous fields of many colors, bright green, bright white - everything was in bloom. You could smell the warm crops baking in the sun - it was such a pleasant ride!! We had to go up and over a pass to get into the next valley over from Lijiang, so much of the road was tight switchback turns - and crazy passing vehicles on each turn!! They have nerves of steel here!

As we approached the mouth of Tiger Leaping Gorge, we could see the amazing mountains to the west and north of us - snow capped and astoundingly beautiful. We did notice we were on the south side of the river, when all we had read in the guidebook said we should be on the north side, but our drivers kept insisting we were going to the right place.

It wasn't exactly the view we were expecting, but I think we would have had to trek for a few days to get those views, and honestly, we had such great scenery yesterday, I think it far surpasses what we would have seen on a trek of the gorge. We ended up walking out about maybe 2 miles into the gorge on a paved, national park trail (Tiger Leaping Gorge is a World Heritage Site, so it's like visiting a national park) to the middle rapids. The gorge is so deep, you can't really see the mountains at the top. What you can see are the mountains downriver, the rapids, and steep sides of the valley.

Luckily, our minibus driver was kind enough (and it helped that we quickly learned the Chinese words for "photo stop please") to stop on the way out of the gorge so that we could take pictures of the mountains above the gorge - giving it the proper perspective it deserves. Driving back, we had gorgeous sunset lighting and the fields and farms were even more charming than before.