Tiger Leaping Gorge

When I first hear of Tiger Leaping Gorge I think it must be a typo. Leaping Tiger Gorge sounds more correct. But I am glad I am wrong. An unconventional name often tells you more than a conventional one. Legend has it that a tiger leapt across this gorge, one of the deepest in the world, to escape a pursuing hunter. Tiger Leaping Gorge evokes a perfect image of the legend.

The geographics of the gorge are more interesting. The Jinsha river, originating in the Himalayas, roars into the gorge, roars out the other, lower, end and becomes the mighty Yangtze river that empties into the ocean over 3000 kilometres away.

A thousand metres above the river are ancient paths called tea horse trails, so called because they were used for bartering Chinese tea for Tibetan ponies. They were also used to transport other goods like salt, silk and silver, and to deliver Buddhism to China from India. The trails have been worked on to reduce some but not all of their ruggedness to create a fairly challenging undertaking for trekkers.

The trek is divided into segments: upper, middle and lower gorge. The trail head is located in a town called Qiaotou. The upper gorge segment comprises two relentless ascents. The first takes you up a steep road to the Naxi Family Guesthouse. The Naxi are an ethnic group that evolved from ancient nomadic tribes between the first and seventh century of the common era. Because the road is motorable, the temptation is always there to drive up to the guesthouse. We decide after a fairly robust discussion the previous evening. For a few extra Yuan, our driver agrees to drop us off at the guesthouse before taking our luggage to the hotel we have booked into two days later.

From the Naxi guesthouse we commence the most difficult part of the trek, a notorious uphill section called the ‘28 bends’, a series of switchbacks that entail regular scrambling up rocks. For an hour or so a lady follows us on a donkey. I think she regards me as a prospect to run out of puff and pay her a few yuan to ride her donkey instead. But I am determined to do it on foot. It is a struggle. The relentless ascent, the paucity of oxygen at close to 3000 metres above sea level, consciousness about my age all seem to be working against me, challenging my mental resolve. I reach a point where I consider giving up, but realise in the next instant it is my mind screaming out to stop, not my body which has some way to go yet. I pause, catch my breath, take a step, and another one. And then I am fine again. I stop as often as I need to take in the mighty mountains towering above, some of them snow-capped, the bridges and houses level with us when we started, now far below. I won’t forget those brief moments. A lesson about mind and body. When reasons rush in to quit, I need to let my body take over and my mind adapt. I resort to one step at a time, a slogan for my life. Still, my relief is palpable when I turn a corner and the pinnacle comes into view, close and reachable in a few steps. From there it is mostly downhill, steep and treacherous in places, to our destination, the Tea Horse Guesthouse at the end of the upper segment of the trail. I reflect how fortunate I am to have a shower, dinner and, most importantly, a comfortable bed awaiting me. In Man’s Search For Meaning, the book I’m reading, the author Victor Frankl, exhausted after an excruciating day in Auschwitz, dined on thin gruel and, if he was lucky, a small piece of stale bread, after which he tried to catch a few hours’ sleep on a hard wooden surface with no pillow before the dawn of another horror day. I have no right to feel any sense of a hard life. My life is soaked in privilege. There are millions today who lead lives of extreme hardship. I am most definitely not one of them. The ‘hardship’ I underwent yesterday was entirely self-inflicted. I didn’t need to do it. There was even a donkey on offer.

From our room, I peer out at the mountains and reflect there is a lot of great scenery in these parts that don’t require you to half kill yourself to see. One is able to drive to this guesthouse too.

In the morning, my partner whips open the window curtains to the opening theme of Beethoven’s ninth symphony. I cannot think of more appropriate music for that instant. Mighty music goes with mighty mountains. Beethoven was a force of nature too, possessing a mind like no other, able to capture the potential of the human spirit, which can metaphorically soar to the height of a mighty mountain.

 We set off to trek the middle gorge segment. I envisage a comfortable walk compared to yesterday, enabling me to bask in the magnificent surrounds. For a while it is fine, gentle uphill and downhill sections but mostly flat, then I am confronted by an unexpected short sharp climb, the length of a couple of yesterday’s switchbacks. From there it is a treacherous rocky downhill slog for practically 2 km until we reach the middle gorge village where our next hotel is located. The scenery remains consistently magnificent throughout. We meet many goats in this section. Mountain goats they are, sure footed even on almost vertical slopes. They belong to domestic herds because some of them have bells, and they seem unafraid of humans. We come across a few adorable kids, one of them bleating imploringly as it runs after the herd.

The next morning I feel I have done enough trekking. I remember that’s exactly how I felt before attempting Mount Fuji, as we’d completed a 6-day trek a few days earlier. But from the moment I took the first steps it was a case of one step at a time until, 6 hours later, we were photographing each other at the summit. Today we are going to descend to the bottom of the gorge. I will repeat the Fuji episode, start off and go as far as I want before turning back. My stomach is manifesting my apprehension. I need to start walking. Let actual physical input control my emotions. Imaginations play tricks. I set off with Bock and, like Fuji, go all the way, down with him to the bottom where gentle water becomes a raging torrent as it leaves the gorge, then up again and back to our hotel 4 kilometres away. I’ll long remember Tiger Leaping Gorge. It is a privilege to have trekked in such awesomely magnificent country.