Shangri-La – Our home away from home

The legend goes a tiger leaped across the gorge, still 25m wide at its narrowest part, when a hunter was trying to capture him.  Hence the name Tiger Leaping Gorge.  A three hour bus ride from Lijiang took us to Tiger Leaping Gorge.  It is one of the deepest gorges in the world measuring 3900m in height and 16km in length (pictured above).  At its depth snakes the Yangzi river, and at its height are the Haba and Jade Dragon Snow Mountains.  The gorge trek is the most famous in South western China and is popular with both Chinese and foreign hikers.  We were quite excited when our bus driver stopped by the first bend of the gorge to let us snap some pictures.  It had been raining so the colour of the Yangzi River was muddy brown.  Witnessing the power of the water rushing through the first bend of the steep soaring mountains leaves you in awe of its majestic splendour.  We hopped back into the bus to head further up towards our guest house in Walnut Garden.  The drive got a little scary as we drove higher up on the unpaved narrow roads half flooded with rain water.  Looking out the window, the Yangzi River was just an inch away from the edge of the road.  Luckily our tough female driver manoeuvred the bus skilfully over all the bumps and turns and took us safely to the guest house.  We quickly settled down on the second floor patio of the guest house facing the opposite side of the gorge, overlooking the Yangzi.  Most travellers come here to hike for 2-3 days.  Since it was raining nonstop, our plan was to do short hikes around the Walnut Garden area which was supposedly the prettiest of all.  However, after talking to our guide, we found out that hiking was not an option in this bummy rainy weather.  The hike would be too slippery and dangerous in the rain as it’s extremely steep.  We did have a good time hanging out on the patio underneath an umbrella sipping some coffee, researching our next destinations (Eug), and reading True Blood (me)!  The view of the canyons combined with the sounds of the roaring river from the patio was amazing.  The constant movement of the clouds in the gorge made it seem like it was a different scene every single minute.  It would’ve been really nice to do some hiking but we were pretty content with enjoying the panorama from where we were.

The next day rained too so we left for our next destination – Shangri-La.  Shangri-La used to be called Zhongdian, until the officials here declared that this was the location of the famed Shangri-la described in the British writer James Hilton’s book The Lost Horizon.  There’s been arguments as to whether Hilton’s Shangri-La was fictional or not, but using the descriptions in his book authorities here are adamant that this is where Hilton was talking about.  True or not, I say our Vancouver home is our real Shangri-La.  Anyways, it was a lot colder here than in Lijiang due to the higher altitude.  I had to bust out my LJ’s (long johns) from our Kilimanjaro hike.  Thanks Auntie for the warm wear!  Again Shangri-La was wet and rainy so we couldn’t get out to the mountains, lakes, and the valleys surrounding the town.  The muddy roads were flooded so the buses and cars couldn’t get around.  It was too bad but we stayed in the old city and enjoyed the serenity of the old town without the interference of large groups of China tourists like in Lijiang and Dali.  This was probably due to the fact that the 7 day National holiday was over, and most Chinese tourists wouldn’t bother to get out here to hike anyways.  The town looked and felt quite different than the others we’ve visited so far in China because it was Tibetan, as opposed to Chinese or other minorities.  We visited the small, somewhat new Tibetan monastery on top of the old city.  We could really feel the high altitude here by just walking up about 50 steps.  This familiar feeling (from the Kilimanjaro hike) was somewhat refreshing since we’ve had way too much polluted air from other cities in China.  Gasping for cold crisp air wasn’t that bad after all.  There was a giant prayer wheel at the back of the monastery.  It was my first time seeing a prayer wheel.  Eug and I and maybe about 5 other Chinese tourists walked around the wheel 3 times together to pray for goodness overall.  That was pretty exciting for me already but Eug said we’d be seeing tons of that in Tibet, woo can’t wait!  We also tried to go to the Ganden Sumpseling Gompa, a 300 year old Tibetan monastery complex.  But the admission went from 10RMB a couple of years ago to 85RMB today.  It was too steep for our budget.  And we’d be visiting tons of monasteries in Tibet, so we decided to not go.  Eug was tempted to go around the back to hike up 2kms (like other travelers did) to sneak in but it was raining and the shuttle that takes you up was right there, so we wouldn’t have made it far before someone stopped us.  The local bus ride there and back was pretty fun though.  It was only 1RMB and we saw a few lamas on the bus too heading into town from the monastery.

The weather didn’t cooperate for the past 4 days but regardless we had a good time soaking up nature’s beauty on the sidelines.  And we had time to chill at coffee shops with wifi, to talk to local restaurant owners, and to catch up with fellow travellers.  There were plenty of independent western and Chinese backpackers in these parts, and thankfully no tour groups.  In fact we were the only visitors in the Tiger Leaping Gorge village of Walnut Garden.  That was a very nice change from the previous national holiday week.  It was a relaxing and pleasant 4 rainy days.