Lijiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge

What an amazing place Southwest China is.  It has some of the most beautiful geography I've ever seen.  Using Lijiang as my basecamp, I met Peter and two of his bandmates - Shelby and Elliott - in the city and caught a van to Tiger Leaping Gorge (TLG).  I took Brittany's (former roommate) advice and stayed at Mama Naxi's Guesthouse and met the world famous Mama Naxi.  Before I paid and before I checked into the guesthouse, she force-fed me bananas.  What a Mama.  Lijiang is the ultimate example of a domestic tourist destination with busloads of Eastern Chinese Han unloaded into the city everyday.  It does have a lot of charm but I tried to spend as little time as possible there.

TLG is a two-day hike in one of the world's deepest gorges.  The mountains are 2,000 meters (about 6,600 feet) taller than the rapidly flowing Yangtze River below.  It is often a sheer drop over a cliff.  The hike is about 20 kilometers (13 miles) and is done over two days because the first third is absolutely grueling.  A section of it is called the "28 Bends" in which the trail ascends such a steep mountain that there are switchbacks every couple of minutes.

We stayed at the Halfway Guesthouse on the trail, a courtyard compound perched precariously perpendicular to the cliff face.  Shelby and I shared a room with a big window facing the mountains on the opposite side of the gorge.  From our beds we could neither see the top nor the bottom of the mountains.

Unfortunately, the season is starting to turn into monsoon.  Rain is frequent and the sky is often occluded by humidity-trapping clouds.  For most of the trek we could only see the bottom 2/3 of the mountains because clouds covered the top.  Peter reminded us with almost annoying frequency that the view last time he did it was much more astounding.  Regardless, I felt such a high being up there and finishing the trek.