Lijiang & Tiger Leaping Gorge

One of the main reasons we visited Lijiang was it was here where we could organise our next trip to the 'Tiger Leaping Gorge' (more about this in a bit!) however it was another great ancient city where we whiled away the hours meandering the streets, checking out the market stalls & generally just taking in the very traditional Chinese atmosphere.

Black Dragon Pond park is a beautiful attraction, a lovely walk just outside of the old town main square with a number of temples and a lake with the gorgeous backdrop of Jade Dragon Snow Mountains. Definitely worth a visit

Tiger Leaping Gorge
This was a trek we were really looking forwards to as we'd heard great things about it. However not so great was the '3 hour' bus ride to Qiaotou which in reality because of the truly awful roads and many accidents we saw along the way took about 5 hours.
So after we arrived at 1.30 we set about finding the beginning of the trek. Along the way we met 2 other couples & we all basically got lost. After about 40 minutes of going completely the wrong way & not being able to find the signposts, we set about going the right way. And then it pi***d down with rain!
So we were already almost 2 hours late on starting the trek, but thankfully the weather brightened up and further on we met another 3 guys that were on their way up so we all headed on together.
The killer punch of the day was the '24 bends' which is an extremely steep hike, apparently 600 metres, so after successfully making it that far we finally rest at the 'TeaHorse Guest House' at around 6pm.

The next day was beautifully clear & allowed us to truly appreciate the scenery. It was breathtaking.
It stayed clear for us all day so the 9 of all hiked together across waterfalls, high above the Yangtze River, all in all about 5 hours that day and we enjoyed every minute of it.

written by

mich_and_dan_moors on August 3, 2011 from Lijiang, China

from the travel blog: mich_and_dan_moors's Travel Blog

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