It’s been a long time since we have travelled with friends but we have finally found a family crazy enough to join us on an adventure. For the blog they will be known as the Flintstones. We were meeting them and our tour guide at Lijiang train station. We have used Shanghai Outing Club for day trips around Shanghai and although more expensive than doing it solo the tours do help you avoid the tourist traps and take away the stress of picking accommodation ad food options.

Our drive up to Lijiang took an hour less than we expected so we arrived super early. With no coffee or breakfast options in sight we headed a little way down the hill to find nourishment. a rather simple meal later we walked back up the hill to meet our guide. BBboy was estaicitc to learn that he was a basket ball fan, within minutes they were playing in the square outside the station.

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Yunnan seems a little stricter on travel information than Sichuan, at least for foreigners. For hotel checkin/transports/ tourist sites we needed our green code, 14 day travel history, phone number, passports copy, entry stamp and current residence address. This meant the flintstones exit of the train station took a while but gave the boys more basket ball time.

Soon enough we were on the road to our hotel is the old town of Lijiang. The hotel room small but way posher than we would have booked our selves, was right on the edge of the touristy old town. Similar in feel to Dali but with less blue. China is very good at building new old looking buildings so it’s hard to know what is authentic but we had an enjoyable afternoon of wandering shops, visiting Naxi (local minority people) museum and believe it or not playing basketball on a court cut into the side of the steep town.

The next morning we woke with anticipation and nerves, we were heading to the famous Tiger Leaping Gorge. A two day hike in front of us at approx 2600m altitude would no doubt be a test of our fitness, my fear of heights and husbands relatively newly rebuilt knee.

The first stop was the fabled location that the tiger leaped across the roaring rivers to escape it hunters. After the now normal but slow process of checking in we visited the touristy and slightly busy site. Despite the people the views were impressive, mothers natures display via the powerful rapids were memorising. This part of the gorge has never been successfully navigated by raft… the 11 people who tried all died.

This part of the gorge was disappointingly affected by construction as China drives to improve infrastructure in its more remote locations. Despite understanding the reasons for the new roads and railways it’s still hard to see the destruction of the natural beauty involved in the process. In true efficiency style the whole place in torn up and then replaced, I’m sure in a few years the current scares of development will be grown over but for now the entrance, lower road and exit of the gorge are no more than dusty construction sites.

Luckily We had been prewarned of this otherwise it would have been very tempting to turn around and skip the gorge all together. For lunch our guide took us (by bus) approximately 1000m up the gorge wall, way away from the construction below, also cutting out a 2 or 3 hour walk/climb up to our staring point Naxi guest house.

After lunch the walk truely began, the toughest part of the two day hike, known as the 28 bends was a real test for us all. In total a elevation gain of about 400m in about 2.5 kilometres with sections feeling like 1:1. It took us 2.5 hours to cover the relatively small distance but our efforts where rewarded as we left the crowds and views of construction behind us. In front lay views that can not be justly described in words.

The following enjoyable 3 ish hours of either down or relatively flat walking was constantly interrupted by gasps of amazement and photo stops. We arrived at our rest point (tea horse guest house) early evening to a well earned beer and more spectacular views.