Lilli put us in the car to the driver and wished us a nice holiday in China. We'll meet the next guide at the tiger leaping gorge. Ok, let's go. After one hours ride the driver took a small track to a field and stopped. Hmm, what's next? With some really basic chinese language fractions and a lot of agitating and waving we found out, the we now need to take some pictures. We arrived at the first loop of the Yangtze river. But the Yangtze river isn't called Yangtze in chinese - hey, that's too easy. The real name is "golden sand river" or, as we think, "brown broth"......
Around noon we arrived at the tiger leaping gorge and met Anna, our new guide. She half Naxi half Tibetan and speaks plenty of languages. Next year in the winter time her plan is to learn french or german. Good luck, but first let's have lunch.
It's hard to find words how nice the "restaurant" was, so we just show some pictures:
Ok, that's this tiger leaping gorge now, we recognized. We believed in the description that the gorge is 30m wide and much more impressive as the grand canyon in the US. Well, maybe we're just not far enough.....
Now we arrived at the most narrow part of the gorge. Let's put it in these words: it's not exactly 30 meters. The only 30m tight thing there is the Yangtze. And again there is a short stairway (700 steps) down to the river.
At the river level is a statue of an Tiger. The legend tells that the Tiger jumped over the Yangtze as he was hunted. That's also the explanation, why the Tigers are extinguished in this part of China: they are hunted and not every pussy is able to jump that far.
The Yangtze is really impressive here. Power pure. And noisy. But still impressive. If it's really the onliest place in the world with such kind of river? Maybe not. The deepest part of the gorge is just more than 2000m. In theory, which means it's measured between two mountains (jade dragon mountain [5.592m] and the Haba Xueshan [5.396]). But the both mountains are not really next to each other. How far is a well kept secret in China.....
But nevertheless, it's really worth a visit. And you'd better hurry up if you'd like to see it. There are still plans to build a couple of dams for power generation. How easy this is for a area called a world cultural heritage we don't know. But the chinese managed to cope with cultural things also 50 years ago.
The sedan bearer seem to make good business. They're placed at all strategical important places and offer their service. A lot of chinese are using it. We'd really wouldn't dare using this service, on the other hand the people are earning their money. Somehow we germans aren't the guys enjoying services.
But there are other jobs in the tourism branch. For example the "waiting-for-tourists-and-watching-them-not-to-throw-garbish-to-the-ground-and-if-they-do-insult-them-and-clean-up-guard" or the simple sales man.
Regina and Stephan hit each other with the cameras - lucky us only on the photographs.
We boarded the car again and started in the direction to Zhongdian. Together with Anna it was much more interesting than before. She didn't stop talking about the region and everything. So we tried to keep up with the flood of information. One of the information was, that we're passing a very old village of the Yi people, which lived since there since thousands of years next to the Naxi people and there was never a fight or war. By the way, all the fields are cultivated by the Yi from the village.
And then we arrived in the valley of Zhongdian. This is the area called Shangri La, what means "paradise on earth". And it's really a paradise, blue sky, real clouds and nature. Some things we're not used to in Suzhou. Maybe it's a little to much cloud photos, but we're really impressed.
Not only the sky changed, also the architecture and the animals. Totally relaxed the cows, yacs, porks and whatever is strolling around. We got the information, that the bamboo with the prayer banner on the roof of a building means that the inhabitants are tibetian buddhists. If there are three of these bamboo prayer banners, then is at least one son of the inhabitants a monk. And only these families are allowed to show the yellow prayer banners.
The hotel was the next surprise. Definitely the best and nicest room during our time in China. And little Buddha was happy ;-)
But sitting around and doing nothing is not the attitude for this vacation. First we checked out, what kind of flowers are blooming in 3.300m altitude.
And dinner. So close to Tibet we went to an (surprise) tibetian restaurant and had a amazing good dinner existing of Yak meet, Yak butter tea, rice, bread, veggies, and potatoes. From now on we are big Yak fans, promised, it's delicious.
As a perfect ending of a day we watched a sun set like it should be in the mountains. Extra for us!
Wow, how to top this first impression of the Shangri La? Maybe with a cold, Stephan got? Let's see, but anyway this is a completely different story......
Real sky..
...and sun set in
the mountains...
