Tiger Leapt Stone

At 7 the next morning, the minibus would pick me up. I went down to the road and this time, there actually was one waiting for me. I met some lovely American girls on the bus and tagged along with them for the hike. I had a lot of fun, and they said they did too. We hiked and talked most of the way about subjects ranging from travel to malaria and from cancer to Facebook’s ‘poking’ function. Oh yeah, and about poo. Did I say they were nurses?

In the meantime, we climbed up to 2700 m, which turns out to be quite high. We were all out of breath more than once, especially when the hike became more challenging. It wasn’t really too special until we came to Tea Horse Guest House, where we had lunch at around 4 in the afternoon. The signs we passed at 1 said it was an hour away, so we figured that should be fine for lunch. Good thing we all brought food of our own…

After that though, the scenery changed and turned absolutely Gorge-ous. I’m sorry, I’ve been sitting on that pun for days. We enjoyed our hike more and took a lot more pictures than before that. Thankfully it was only another 2 hours to the place where we’d sleep – and this time the time on our map actually worked out. It took us 7 hours to do the first 4,5, then 1,5 to do the last 2. Good thing too, because this way we could see the sunset from a nice terrace instead of a darkening trail. We got a room together with some of the people we’d shared a bus with and some we’d met on the way, so it was basically like a 10 people slumber party. I learned a lot about Israel from the two gay Israeli guys who were there, and we talked about politics too. Apparently I just bring it out in people.

The next day, I went to see the sunrise and then wanted to leave so I could also go down to the gorge itself, and since the river was about 400m below the lowest point of our hike, so going down to it woult take quite some time. Since none of the people I had met the day before wanted to leave this early, I went by myself, seeing that a couple of people had just left anyway, and I figured I could catch up. The second day was even better than the first, with me climbing through waterfalls and seeing other beautiful sights. When I had had lunch at Tina’s Guesthouse, I joined a group of Koreans and an Australian guy on their way down to the gorge, which was a lot of fun, seeing and feeling the amazing power of the river. Although then we still had to climb up. And when I say climb, I mean CLIMB. There were a couple of ladders for the way up. And when I say ladder, I mean something made of metal, with most of the rungs intact, but some of them loose and hanging, or two thirds of a rung missing… It was fun. But the rest of the climb wasn’t really, trying to walk up all that way, at that altitude. It took us about an hour and a half though, so nothing too shameful (the time on the map said an hour).

After this, I slept on the bus. So in two weeks in China, I’ve learned to sleep in a car, then on a train, then on a bus. I guess it just makes the amazing distances seem that much shorter. Sleeping made me feel a lot better. I decided to do it more often.

I’d already met the people who were sitting behind me the night before, but now, Gareth and Sam asked me whether I was feeling better, since they had overheard me talking about how I couldn’t eat without getting nauseated, and between Oreo’s I told them that I was in fact feeling better. Since they were still looking for a hostel, they decided to come with me to the one I stayed at before and booked a room in again. When we got there though, they had no beds or rooms available. Not for me either. Apparently the great guy who’d been so good at English and arranged everything hadn’t really realized I’d been wanting to book the same room for when I got back, despite me saying so. So instead, I went to a different hostel and met up with Gaz and Sam for dinner, since they’d been turned away before I was – everyone at the hostel had thought there was still one bed left, but there wasn’t…

Anyway, we had dinner and drinks, and they were very lovely, as were the conversations. I feel like I keep saying this and it starts to lose its meaning, but the conversations really are a lot of fun. I went to bed around 2AM, knowing that my alarm clock would go off at 7 the next morning… to get the bus to Lugu Lake!