Hiking Tiger Leaping Gorge

I had no intentions of going to Tiger Leaping Gorge.

My original plan was to go to Lijiang and spend a few lazy days eating yak cheese and exploring the nearby villages.

But thanks to a chance meeting on a train and the certain swagger that comes with youth, I instead jumped on a bus and hiked 16 plus incredibly strenuous miles over mountains and around bends with someone I’d just met.

It wasn’t the first spontaneous decision of the weekend. After deciding at the last possible moment that I had no interest in spending the long holiday weekend in Guilin, I threw some clothes and my camera in a bag, went to the train station with a scrap of paper listing three far-flung destinations around China, and said I wanted to go to whichever one had the next train out.

Rumpusing in the rice terraces

Weary from playing Frogger with our lives every time we crossed the street and anxious to spend some time away from the bustle and noise of city, I traveled with some foreign teacher friends a few hours north to a village near Longsheng last weekend.

Longsheng — known for it’s splendid views of rice terraces and quite hikes through the nearby mountains – had been a beacon beckoning us to it for weeks.

View from the hike