I left Lijiang early morning and took the 2 hour bus ride to the Tiger Leaping Gorge. On the bus I met other travelers going the same way. So we decided to join together and rent a car. So far Yunnan has kept my expectation and indeed I was awestruck by the beauty of the gorge and the mountains. We traverse the narrow passage towards the hotel. I could still see the traces of debris from the earthquake a year early. We stopped several times because there are random landslides along the way and an occasional boulders blocking the road. Mid-way we were told to walk because the workers will take several hours to clean the road. The hike up the mountain was a breeze, what I was afraid of was the occasional falling stones. The hotel was at a scenic cliff overlooking an ice capped mountains. We are about 2500m above sea level, it’s pretty high.

We took a short break on a shed by the side of the hotel. An old woman on her 70s rose up from the stone hillside steps carrying a sack of vegetables on her back. We greeted her and took photos, she proceeded by to telling us a story about the stone passage down the gorge. Her broken mandarin was easy for me to understand. Before they built a bridge on the hill top, villagers cross to the other side of the mountain through the stone passage down hill. Her late husband took 2 decades carving the  passage on the vertical rock. She said we can donate 10 yuan and it will help her. Each of us gave her 20 yuan and then we proceeded down the gorge. It was a 40 minutes descend, and quite frankly I underestimated the trek. I know it would be tough for me to go back up, the mountain is very steep and it drop straight to the water. I could hear the thundering flow of the gorge, it’s frightening. I was told the water came from the melting Himalayan snows and flowing straight to the Yangtze river. To say the climb up is tough is an understatement. It was a harrowing experience for me. There was no harness, I have to grip on the questionable wires by the mountain side. In my head, I was already imaging how adventurous the old woman’s husband were carving a passage by the gorge. There was a middle age woman on the station half way up, selling Redbulls.  I bought 2 cans and down it quickly and then  offer to pay her 50 yuan to help me carry my loaded camera equipment, I had 3 lenses including super wide lens. She agreed and took my bag up. I slipped twice and narrowly fell on the jagged rocks. In the end it took me 3 hours to climb up. I told myself that was the last of it. But it wasn’t, it was just the start…