overdressed and overstressed

So we flew out of Chengdu at 7AM and into Lijiang. From the airport we took a bus into the centre of Lijiang, then a cab out to the Old town where we’d booked a hostel. We stored our luggage at the hostel and heading by cab straight to the bus station.

It was 10:42 and we split up… Penny lined up to get bus tickets to Shangri-la & I went to the information counter to find out how often the buses run (we’d heard anything from twice a day to once an hour).

The woman at the counter told me there was a bus at 11AM, then another at 12:30. I looked at my watch… 10:50AM. I looked at Penny in the line for tickets…

We managed to get tickets for the 11AM bus and jumped on board just before it left, discovering that not only was it almost empty, but it was the most luxurious bus in our trip so far, and possibly the most luxurious I’ve ever been on. The full bus ride to Shangri-la takes 4 hours, but we were getting off at the halfway point, a cruddy little village called Qioutau, pronounced (we later learned) “chowtow”. We gave the driver a note in chinese (one we prepared earlier!) that said “hello, we’d like to get off at Qioutau” and he nodded, grunted and pointed. I pointed at the note, then at the door. He grunted again and gave me back the note… and thus was our business concluded.

(yes, I know I’m long winded… you’ll just have learn to live with it)

About 2.5 hours into our journey the driver grunted and pointed, and we knew it was time to exit the bus.  Pausing only to tell the waiting touts that they could go and  “exit the bus”, we took a quick toilet break and then paused to collect our bearings. Apparently bearing collection is a lost art that Penny and I both suck at. We realised we didn’t really have any idea where to go, so we made an educated guess, based on the single map we had (hand drawn and photocopied) and walked left up the road towards Shangri-la.

We turned out to be correct and we found the enterance to Tiger Leaping Gorge. The first hostel we had planned to ask questions at had been demolished, so we continued up the road (which was under construction and a complete mess) and were stopped by a guard who pointed at a nearby sign, which said the gorge was completely closed until December 2010. We both looked at each other in shock, stress levels rising… surely we hadn’t come all this way to be turned back… all the trouble in Chengdu, the airfares… it was all for nothing… our bearings fell to the floor and rolled off…

…then we remembered it was January 2011. You’ll have to trust me, and I know it’s hard after the whole “opening the DVD player” fiasco, but you’ll just have to trust me when I say that it was a poorly worded sign, and we both misread it.

(also, I am quite aware that it’s considered poor form, grammatically speaking, to place an AND immediately after a comma, but I don’t care… sometimes you need your reader to pause, and then continue.)

So we asked the guard where the ticket office was (it costs some money to get into the gorge) and he pointed to his left. We turned to go but he stopped us:

“where are you from?”

“Australia”

“You don’t need a ticket”

“umm… thanks”

“be careful”

“umm… we will”.

Then he stepped aside and we were in! We had directions from three different sources that were all pretty consistent so we started walking down the road (which is called the low road, and is where all the tourists take the mini bus down to the highlight of the gorge, Tiger Leaping Stone). We stopped briefly at a hostel called Janes, which has a reputation for being a very helpful starting point for hikers.

Nobody there spoke english so we continued down the road, looking for the red arrows that are supposed to be EVERYWHERE, marking the trail for hikers like us. The entrance to the gorge high road (which is where all the hardcore hikers go) is supposed to be 300m past Janes, next to a school (look for the red arrow that isn’t there). About 10m past Janes, we passed what I’m still convinced is the school… but we both assumed we needed to go further.

We walked for about 40 minutes before realising we had no clue where we were going… tempers flared (mostly mine)… stress levels built (mostly mine)… we were about to turn off the road (of course there was no red arrow) up the first path we’d seen for ages, when a couple of guys walking down the road called out and told us not to go up, but to continue down the road. About 10 minutes after that, a tout pulled over in her car and tried to convince us to let her drive us up to the high road. Penny kept asking her where the high road was and telling her we wanted to walk, and eventually she poined at the turn off we’d been about to take earlier (still no red arrow), before swearing at us and driving off.

I thought the two random guys on the road were way more trustworthy than the tout, so (still stressed and flared) I told Penny that I was sick of walking and we should go back to Janes and find someone who spoke English, possibly getting some real directions. Penny has more faith than me, and is better at dealing with unplanned events, so she decided to walk up the turn off (which switch-backed up the mountain) and see if she could find any arrows.

I waited at the bottom, convinced that she’d be back soon, humbled… allowing me to gloat about how I knew that wasn’t the way, before confidently leading us back to Janes where we could get some real directions. Half way up the road, I shouted up to Penny…. “how far up that road are you going to walk before you admit it’s not the way?“. She just turned up the next switchback and kept going. A little further up and I shouted out, “I can tell you unequivocally that’s not the way“.

It was the way.

At the top of the road she found some red arrows and some friendly locals who pointed her further up the road. We continued up the road and I calmed down and appologised, because I was a dick and I love her. Anyway enough drama… here are some pictures of the scenery we walked through, before we eventually got lost again:

 

Yes we got lost again… a local pointed us up the wrong road for 20mins before another local pointed us back down. I got frustrated again but Penny is infinitely patient (although she did say we could only travel via tours from now on)… we walked back to the bend in the road where the guy had given us the bad directions… frustrated, defeated (and on the verge of divorce?) where we found our salvation.

(Here’s an intermission… go and grab popcorn if you like – So it says overstressed… that’s obvious…. but overdressed? Basically, we had all our thermals and puffy jackets on. We had a 10KG pack full of wet weather gear and sleeping bags because we’d heard it was winter and incredibly cold and wet. It wasn’t. In fact, it was dry, and very hot, which is how Penny came to be standing on the road in her underwear, trying to strip off layers of thermals before we came upon another local… so… overdressed).

Anyway our salvation turned out to be a friendly local who’s name I can’t remember (or spell, even if I could). He and his partner were artists from a different province who’d come to the gorge to paint the beautiful surroundings. He lived in a small village nestled at the top of the gorge, which happened to be our first planned stop on the hike. He guided us the rest of the way (almost 3 hours), carrying a cane basket full of groceries on his back (he’d just been to the market), stopping for a rest or a photo when we got tired or thirsty. He lead us up into the mountains, along narrow goat trails, along the side of steep cliffs, before we arrived at the village.

 

 

  

Someone had diverted a waterfall further up the mountain, so the path to our hostel was flooded… he lead us carefully along the sides of the path and we finally arrived at the Naxi Guest House just as the sun was setting.

 

Some people stay on the bus to Shangri-la, thinking to find paradise at the end. They really should get off at Qioutau and hike to the Naxi Guest House. It was peaceful and serene… the food was amazing, the hosts were amazing… and the view was sublime. Even though I’m long winded and overly wordy, there’s no way I can describe how beautiful it was…. there are some photos below, but they don’t do it justice…. you really had to be there to see it.