Our itinerary for Day 05 today was light: we said goodbye to the lovely and very warm hospitality of our stay in Lijiang at 9:15AM, and were picked up by our next driver for the Shangri-La segment of the trip. The first place to visit on our itinerary was the Tiger Leaping Gorge, and it took us just over 2 hours to get there. We also picked up our guide — a Mr. Zhang — for our Shangri-La segment at the main entrance to the attraction. The place was pretty busy for a Tuesday afternoon: there was slow traffic with many other vehicles and tour buses also queuing up to enter the park.
The Tiger Leaping Gorge is a deep canyon along the Jingsha River, a tributary located in Yunnan of the famed Yangtze River that runs through a good length of China. The gorge is famous for its steep cliffs, waterfalls, and rushing river, and is so named because according to legend, a tiger leapt across the river to escape a hunter, using the large rock that sits in the middle of the rushing waters.
The Gorge requires a number of steps — 1,000 in fact — to make your way down from the car park and admissions counter. Getting down, as these things go, was fairly easy, but climbing back up is a different matter. For those not up to the challenge, there’s an escalator you can ride on, but you’d need to pay admission fees (70 RMB per person for the ride back up). We opted not to pay that fee, and all four of us were able to manage the climb back up.
Pictures!
We spent over an hour at the Gorge, and thereafter made our way to Shangri-La to check into our hotel and drop off luggage, before heading out again to visit Dukezong Ancient Town and Guishan Hill.