Our itinerary for Day 06 today was light: we said goodbye to the lovely and very warm hospitality of our stay in Lijiang at 9:15AM, and was picked up our next driver for the Shangri-La segment of the trip. The first place to visit in 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 at 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 so named because according to legend, a tiger lept across the river to escape a hunter, and using the large rock that is 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 of fours 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.