After an early start we headed down into the town and caught the local bus to Qiaotou which is 100 km north of Lijiang. This trip took over two hours and finished at a most unlikely starting point for our walk. We were dropped off at a junction in the road about 8 km from Qiaotou and with a degree of uncertainty (is this really the start of the famous walk?) we headed off up a very muddy road being used by large trucks transporting rock to a point further up the hill where roadworks were taking place.
The road became progressively steeper and less muddy and after one and a half hours we reached a settlement called Naxi Guest House about 600 m above our starting point. We were now at 2217 m above sea level. As the conditions were quite warm we stopped for lunch and had some well deserved cool drinks.
After lunch the walk started getting quite a deal tougher as the climb was now steeper and over uneven rocks. We continued climbing for a further two hours on a zig-zag track with 28 corners to reach the highest point where we were at just over 3100 m. A local man was asking hikers to pay to view the gorge from a prominent rocky point. We told him to get lost; we’d paid Y65 to enter the National Park and he was being very cheeky asking this fee!
Throughout most of the climb we were pursued by locals offering us rides on their small ponies. The going price for a ride to the top started at Y400 but those who used the ponies managed to barter the price down to Y200. At the high point it started raining quite heavily and the track became increasingly slippery and dangerous.
Down in the gorge approximately 1000 m below us was the Jinsha River, a headwater of the Yangtze. The muddy waters were flowing rapidly through a ravine that was quite narrow in places. The gorge takes its name from the local tale concerning a tiger that eluded pursuing hunters by leaping across a narrow section.
From the high point we followed the descending trail for about two hours in intermittent rain to Ya Cha village where we found our accommodation, The Tea Horse Guest House.
We had clean rooms with hot showers and fantastic views of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain Range. The guest-house then put on a range of food dishes for us to try as our evening meal.
By morning our wet clothes were now dry and we were ready to do the final four hours of walking the gorge trail.
This section started off being largely a flat section on a narrow ledge looking down into the Jinsha River. Along the way where the terrain was not vertical there were small farms growing corn, potatoes and they usually had goats grazing the steep slopes below us.
The track in places was very narrow and great care was needed especially over slippery rocks. We passed two waterfalls along the way. At a guest-house called Half Way we stopped for refreshments before commencing the final very steep descent into Tina’s Guest House where we were to meet our bus for the return trip home to Lijiang. The total distance covered in the two days was 24 km.
We arrived back in Lijiang at 16:00 where we have the same rooms at the Jinyuan View Guesthouse as two days ago. After the last two days of strenuous hiking everyone in our group is looking forward to a quiet evening and a relaxing sleep ready for tomorrow’s next adventure in the area around Dali.