March 22, 2008

Tiger Leaping Gorge (CHINA)

Hiking Out of Tiger Leaping Gorge, and Repeated Warnings over our Bus to Shangri-La

Cold showers have been the norm ever since I said goodbye to the ridiculous luxuries of the Four Seasons Hotel in Singapore one month ago. However, taking a cold shower on a beach in Thailand, where the sun is always out, is no bad thing. On the other hand, when one is at an altitude of 2500 meters and the sun does not rise until 10:00am because of the towering mountains, there are few prospects worse than an icy shower. So, with the size 6 rubber slippers (I am actually a size 11) provided in the room, I scrubbed myself as quickly and thoroughly as humanly possible under the torment of freezing conditions - I could see my breath the entire time.

The only way to prevent catching a cold was by piling all the blankets on top of the electronic blanket provided in the room, so that when I emerged as a popsicle I dashed under the covers of the bed to my small haven of warmth. I tell this story because it should give an idea of the difficulties that often arise when traveling far away from mankind's creature comforts, but also because I suspect I am not the only one who would prefer such unique experiences to the sublime bathrooms of a place like the Four Seasons (although you probably won't see me turning such luxuries down when I am older.)

There cannot be many better views to wake up to in the morning than the one to the left.

By 8:30am Neil and I drained a couple cups of Nescafe instant coffee, and set off for what would become the final day of the 16km trek. We started our walk with a group of four Spaniards who have been studying Mandarin in Kunming, but as they were still on Spanish time (ie What's the hurry), there quickly emerged distance between us. (As a side note, they somewhat wisely completed the first day of trekking with the help of two mules - one for carrying alternating members of the group and the other for the bags.

The Spaniards proved invaluable when, after about 45 minutes of hiking, Neil and I heard them calling down to us from several hundred meters above. Apparently, we took a wrong turn, and without their help who knows how long it would have taken us to figure this out on our own. Anyway, we had to backtrack uphill for 20 minutes before we regained the path, but taking the wrong turn wasn't such a bad thing: we found a decapitated dog (wolf?) head lying on the ground. I have no idea how the head got there, or why its teeth were so damn white while the tongue was still sticking out of its mouth, but the cigarette butt lying nearby left me with one plausible idea: smoking kills.

Pretty random, huh?

The day's trek took a turn for the worse when the rain started falling at around 11:00am, and although it never started pouring, it was a nuisance nonetheless - primarily because of the cold. Neil once more began feeling the effects of altitude sickness, so our pace was slowed, but nowhere near as much as yesterday. Once more, it was probably a good thing the pace was slow because the path was anything but safe: every year, there are one or two trekkers who fall to their death.

Perhaps the pictures below will give an idea how treacherous most of the day was. To the left is what the trail looks like for a three kilometer stretch: a 1.5 meter wide path with a sheer drop of 1000 meters. To the right is a picture of a particularly dangerous area where a waterfall was falling directly on the path, and there was no choice but to walk right through it. Since the water was six or seven centimeters deep, we had no choice but to step on the rocks, but wet as they were this was probably the worst thing we could have done. On the right, Neil is ominously close to the edge, and the tiniest slip would mean the end.

Below are a couple other photos, the one on the left taken at the same cross as above as a sort of this could be the last photo ever taken of me shot. The photo to the right shows another waterfall we passed under during the trek.

By around 3:00pm we made it through the trek, and all that remained was a several kilometer walk along a construction road that leads down to the rapids of the gorge. However, neither Neil nor myself felt like putting our knees through any more ill-treatment with the steep climb - especially because we had seen and heard the rapids continuously for the past two days - so we instead decided to wait along the road and hitchhike back.

It took us about 20 minutes of waiting, but eventually a small minibus, was returning after a drop-off of some sort (I couldn't understand everything the man was saying), gave us a lift for 25rmb each. We negotiated the price down as far as we could, but we were hoping to reach Zhongdian (Shangri-La) by the same evening, so it was important we reached town without much delay. The drive back took one hour, which is remarkable considering it was only 16 kilometers. The gravel road was in awful condition because of the many landslides (we heard two during our trek, and they are LOUD) and there was only one meter of space between the wheels and the edge. Both Neil and I were cringing as the driver bounced along the road, apparently oblivious to the peril at hand.

Upon reaching Qiaotou, where I returned the jacket to the Australian guesthouse owner and retrieved my backpack, we hustled out of town to try and catch the last bus to Shangri-la for the day. The timing worked out perfectly as we only had a 20 minute wait along the side of the road before we hailed down the passing bus. Although we were at first unsure whether or not we would be allowed on-board - the Tibetan riots have been spreading like wildfire and all of Tibet has already been cut off - but fortunately no one said anything. (We would later find out that David tried to re-join us in Shangri-la, but was denied access in Lijiang, where all tour agents and bus companies were ordered to keep our foreigners.)

It was a four hour bus ride to Shangri-la (formerly known as Zhongdian before it was "discovered" as the location for the famous James Hilton novel, Lost Horizons, taking place in this region of China), and from the half-way point onward there were two ubiquitous sights: snow and military movement. We passed several hastily constructed military camps and convoys of transport trucks that were carrying soldiers into the "conflict areas." Given Shangri-la's location on the cusp of the Tibetan semi-autonomous region, it was obviously high on the government's list of places to keep in check. Of more immediate concern to me was the quickly dropping temperature: I had already returned the rented jacket and had only shorts and a nylon Arsenal-replica jersey to keep me warm.

We arrived in Shangri-la just after 10:00pm, and there were hardly any people on the streets or lights in the town. Fortunately, I had written down a couple of guesthouse addresses before leaving, and we caught a lift to one such place. Given that Shangri-la is basically the-end-of-the-line, and this is still low-season because of the cold, we got a fair discount on our accommodation. However, I would have been willing to pay juts about anything as I was freezing my ass off in the cold - it was several degree below zero!