Day 4: The Tiger Leaping Gorge....

Day 4 : 29th June 2011

At the little country town where we were supposed to lunch - we were joined by our local tour guide for Shangrila. Mr Wang Da belongs to the Tibetan minority and he spoke enough English to help us around and understand some of his explanation. He used to work in house-keeping at the Banyan Tree Resort in Shangrila but as the pay was small ( 600 yuan a month) he left it for the tour guide job where he could easily earn several times more.

As it was still early for lunch - we agreed to push on to visit the Tiger Leaping Gorge. The Yangtze River and the Mekong originate from somewhere up the mountain near here and Tibet and this part called the Tiger Leaping Gorge is a scenic stretch of the river sandwiched by the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain on the Lijiang side and the Haba Snow Mountain on the Shangrila side. Walking tracks hung precariously along the vertical slopes of the mountains by the sides of the river. At stage 1 of the track one could walk down 500 steps to the river and up again 500 steps to where the car park was. At such a high altitude - 3300 metres - pakdokter became breathless very quickly and had to take it slow especially on the uphill climb.

Mr Wang Da, our Tibetan guide, and pakdokter's partner...

if walking is too much for you.....

you can hire these carts with local folks to carry you up and down...

pakdokter's camera could capture the sense of how deep

this ravine was.....

pakdokter's partner and Ravee busy with their cameras..