Tiger Leaping Gorge is one of Yunnan’s must see sights and on most travellers radar. It’s said to be one of the deepest gorges in the world at a maximum depth of 3,790 meters from river to mountain peak. Thanks to it’s popularity a hostel in Lijiang arranges bus tickets to drop tourists off at the start of the hike and then it continues onto Tina’s Guesthouse where the driver drops off your luggage so it’s waiting for you at the end of the trek. There were about 6 western tourists on our bus, a record for us so far in China as they are a rare sight indeed. When we got to the ticket office everyone was talking about a section of the trail being closed and they were considering taking a taxi to avoid that area. We’d come here to do a two day one night hike so it didn’t seem right taking a taxi a chunk of the way so we were the only tourists to say no and hike up from the main road. It wasn’t exactly an interesting route up the road but we did get some nice views along the way of the jagged mountain tops with wispy clouds which looked particularly photogenic when captured between the many pink blossoms.

It only took us an hour to reach Naxi Family Guesthouse where we stopped for an early lunch of fried rice with suspicious brown pieces in it and a bugs leg for good measure. Now the real hike was about to begin along the high trail but it had more people on it than we were expecting. From our experience in China the Chinese don’t really like hiking, they enjoy a bus ride to a view point followed by taking thousands of selfies. It wasn’t busy at all compared to Chinese standards but I think in our minds we expected an empty trail. As the day creeped on clouds began to cover the peaks which was a shame as we couldn’t fully appreciate the gorge.

We overtook most of the locals up the infamous 28 bends and soon passed Tea Horse Trade Guesthouse where some people choose to stay for the night. It seemed way too early to stop the hike here so we were happy we booked a guesthouse at the next village. It was mostly downhill from now on, occasionally having to navigate herds of goats but overall it was easy going and we arrived by 3.15pm, taking us a total of 5 hours which meant the whole gorge was actually doable in one day but the downside to that is you’d probably miss the final bus and have to stay at Tina’s, therefore it’s much better to stay up on the high trail and enjoy the views.

We checked into a fairly new guesthouse we found on trip.com. It was up a few zigzags above the main trail and turned out to be quite a challenge to find. Anyway, we arrived and had our passports checked which is normal protocol in China but this lady took 30 minutes to do a 2 minute job. She also kept repeating the same Chinese questions to us instead of using her phones translator. Just as she took us to the room a Chinese couple arrived to check in. Our room wasn’t like the photo online so we asked about the room with a view like it was supposed to have and she shook her head to say no. Ok never-mind, this’ll do. But then I walked along the communal balcony and the couple that arrived after us were put in the room we had booked! I was so pissed off. The room we booked was in a newly built section with concrete walls and floors, instead we were given a room in the characterful old quarters. I love old wooden buildings but not in hotels, everything was made of wood and lacked any insulation or soundproofing. We could hear everything in the room next to us and I even noticed a huge hole in the wooden wall, not quite verging on a glory hole size but who knows? So I shoved some tissue in it to prevent any peeking. Another problem was when anyone walked past our room everything shook like mad. It was so bad we nicknamed it ‘the earthquake room’. One plus side however was that the shared bathrooms were spotless. The other hotels we’d looked at staying at had communal troughs, a type of toilet I’ve never seen before where each door-less cubicle poops or pees into the a gully with water running through it so if you’re at the bottom then everyone’s business flows past. It’s bizarre! So yeah, I was feeling pretty smug about our posh, clean squatters.

This hiking trail is said to have pretty appalling food but our guesthouse had good reviews for the meals they knocked up so we were hopeful. Sadly Craig got a noodle soup where the broth literally tasted like tap water. It was so strange that they hadn’t added any flavour. But it gets worse, I ordered the vegetable soup and what came out looked like, well, a bowl of vomit. I could barely make eye contact with the soup and had to push it as far away from me as possible. Turns out the lady had messed up my order and given me egg and seaweed soup instead of vegetable. The egg was all scrambled and floating in the murky liquid and the smell was so pungent. Craig managed to eat some of it and he said the seaweed had a bit of a fishy flavour so I definitely wouldn’t have been able to stomach it.

We woke early to try and capture the sunrise but it was another cloudy day. Instead of eating at our guesthouse we decided to head down the road to the most popular hotel on the trek, ‘Halfway House’ where I ordered a banana and chocolate pancake. Praise the lord! I was so happy to eat something with a familiar flavour. We also got the opportunity to check out the trough toilets at this hotel and they really are a crazy design. On the plus side they had an incredible view of the gorge. We set off on the trail and a young Chinese couple ran after us. The lady wanted to practice her English so we had a nice chat about random things with her until we parted ways at a dramatic section of the gorge. It was the first time on the trek where the trail was clinging to the edge of the cliff which we had been expecting for most of the way. It didn’t get our vertigo going at all as the path was wide enough but it was a scenic spot with waterfalls crashing down onto the path.

It took just an hour and a half to reach Tina’s Guesthouse which marked the end of the trek – so it definitely could have been done in one day. Our luggage was waiting for us in the ‘luggage library’ and we now had 5 hours to relax until our bus to Shangri-La. The view from the guesthouse was very impressive and the sun even made it’s first appearance of our trip so the gorge looked beautiful. I must admit the hike wasn’t as impressive as I expected, I’m glad we did it but it didn’t necessarily wow us as much as the blogs had suggested and it certainly wasn’t half as hard as they made out either but maybe the blogs were written by people who don’t hike very often. We did meet some nice tourists though which is very rare in China so we had a nice chat and all 6 of us Brits and Kiwis had lunch together and shared our experiences in China before taking our buses.