Tiger Leaping Gorge

This has to be one of the most beautiful places in China. Just a naturally beautiful location that China hasn't managed to interfere with too much yet with its unique brand of tourism. I think the main reason is it's a little tricky to get to, but not too tricky luckily! We took a flight from Beijing to Lijiang. Lijiang is one of those towns that suffers from the aforementioned problem - naturally beautiful, surrounded by snow capped mountains, but completely destroyed by local tourism. There is a "old town" which is apparently UNESCO heritage listed. I'm no expert, but most of the buildings seem newly built to look old and they are all just shops and restaurants anyway. Since the old town of Lijiang was so disappointing, we ventured to the "ancient town" of Shuhe, which was not far away. This was even more commercialised than the old town - essentially an ancient looking shopping mall. So after seeing what Lijiang had to offer we decided it wasn't for us. Time to get out to some of those surrounding snow capped mountains I say! Since hearing of it, the High Trail of the Tiger Leaping Gorge had been high on my todo list. The Gorge (or "George" as one traveler from Sydney insisted it was pronounced) is a 2hr bus ride from Lijiang. This was amazing. Not the bus ride, the hike. One of the best hikes I've ever done. The best part of two days walking, and constantly faced with epic views. The main thing that struck me is how big everything is. There is no hope of capturing it all in a photo. Even standing there looking at the gorge, the surrounding mountains, villages and farmland you have to look around constantly to capture it. There is just so much to see. And this is how it is for the entire two day walk. It's not like some other walks where you might walk for a long time to see the view... no... the view is always there, by your side, as you walk. Outrageous. The walk itself is almost "choose your own adventure". There are so many trails crisscrossing the mountain. Initially we were worried that we might get lost by taking the wrong trail, but it soon became apparent that they all headed vaguely in the same direction, so you'd get to the end, but maybe a bit later. Alternatively, you can try to determine which is the "main" route by trying to analyse which path contains the most donkey shit. We started the hike in a village and walked through some farms, precariously avoiding goats and cows as we climbed to what we thought was something near the peak of the ridge. This is followed by a merciful stretch of flattish land through some forest before the "28 bends" starts The 28 bends was supposed to be the hardest, but it wasn't too bad. The main problem with this section was that it exposed us to the sun!! We prepared for cold (we went in winter), but totally forgot about the sun. The result? We got burnt to shit. It's very sunny up there above the clouds, and the damn sun gets reflected in all directions by the surrounding snow capped mountains.  
We thought we were hiking pros. We thought we could have the two day hike done in a day if we pushed it. But since we were such pros we thought we'd take it easy and get to our night's accommodation in about four hours. It turns out we were not pros. The first day we walked about 7 hours and reached the "halfway house" guest house just before sundown feel cold, tired and very hungry. The "halfway house" is pretty poorly named as we discovered the next day, as there was only a couple more hours left before we reached the end of the trail. The next day we got up and armed with a hello kitty guitar and local Yunnan drum we completed the walk making many friends and terrible music along the way.
A great thing about this walk is that there are guest houses dotted along the trail where you can stop for the night or just for a rest. The guest house we stayed at was comfortable enough. The trail seems to end at a guest house called Tina's. Tina is apparently a very good business woman and seems to dominate all else in the region - she makes things quite convenient for travelers, with shuttle buses, hostels in neighbouring towns and shitty hand drawn maps. But my advice to potential travelers is that there is no need to rely on Tina's services. She's a bit expensive, and there are a myriad of other (friendlier) accommodation and transport options available. After we finished the trail we After we finished the trail we headed down to the gorge itself. This is done by climbing over a series of sketchy ladders and footbridges as we made our way down the almost shear cliff face. This is not one for the "scared of heights" persuasion. But it's definitely worth it. If you rush you could do it in 2 hrs, but we did it slowly in 4, taking time to stop for pictures and take in the power of the river flowing through the gorge. Amazing. Again, the size of the thing is unimaginable. As a small observation made on this trip, travelling with small pink Hello Kitty guitars is extremely entertaining.