Tiger leaping, or how we crawled towards the gorge

Our second attempt to go through the mountains towards the Tiger leaping gorge proofed to be more successful. The tiger leaping gorge is also called first bent of the mighty Yangtze river and is one of the deepest gorges on the planet with 3900m from river bed to mountain top.

But before we actually got there we had another tough two days.
As we already thought the route info which we got from the Internet was not very reliable and the road was even unsealed for more than 10km uphill. Cycling over the spiky cobblestones felt more like working with a jackhammer while climbing. Instead of around 42km and a nice guest house we had more than 60km and over 1100m altitude on our instruments when we gave up and weakly asked a local family along the road if they could provide shelter for the night.

The woman was very hospitable and we quickly agreed on conditions for accommodation and food. She stayed there with here daughter and her granddaughter. They belonged to the ethnic minority called Yi which is quite unique because of their living matriarchal culture.
The family lived in three houses and there were two more stable like buildings which looked fairly new. They also had some animals and I especially liked the pig because it wanted to play with us like a dog as it was brought for feeding.

The little girl ran around with the special Chinese baby trousers which are open at the backside. I had seen this already some years ago in western China but still had to smile at the sight. And this time it was quite cold with our hosts home at above 3200m.

I was so exhausted that I did not even want to eat, which is very unsusal after cycling the whole day in the mountains. At the end I managed to enjoy some of the baked potatoes which were directly roasted in an open fire in the main house.
As often in remote places the hospitability was outanding and we sat cosily around the open fire with the family members. One son who came in later was especially cheering and we read together in our Chinese language book to enhance our limited Chinese conversation.

It was great to use the little sentences of Mandarin which Ragna and I had learnt in the last months in our Chinese class and my enthusiasm for our studies really went up.

Both of us felt the altitude at night with heavy heads and wild dreams.

We had hoped to wake up with a clear blue sky, see snow capped peaks and dry after days of rain. Unfortunately it was not yet over. Neither the snow and rain nor the bad road conditions. The last 30km went all downhill, which sounds perfect in the first place but the siky cobbles were back again and it was all wet and really slippery. So slippery that Ragna fell twice even though we went down with less than 20km/h. A real pain for both of us to see give away the altitude which we had laboured to gain without a real downhill ride.
Not enough with that, my bak tire burst around 5km before we reached the next village. At this point I was quite fatalistic already and did not care so much. I was even without strong anger at the prospect to stop cycling from here on if we would not get a spare tyre.

It felt all pretty miserable with the rain constantly pouring down and now descending in this grey round shaped valley.
The atmosphere was not much better in Daju itself with a nondescript accommodation an open pit toilet and hardly any soul walking around i the village.

But things should soon become much much better...
We found a replacement Chinese tyre for me with a massive tread for the extra grip needed here and I could fix my bike.

When we woke up the next morning we could hardly believe what we saw: The sky was almost free of clouds and the cobalt blue sky with and snowcapped peaks around us seemed too god to be true after all this rainy days.

Now we only had to cross the Yangtze river. This should happen on a small ferry. But before we could embark the boat we had to climb around 150-200m steeply down. We knew this would be impossible with our packed bikes but hoped we could find a porter with a donkey. The porter was already waiting when we reached the top of the gorge.

The way up on the other side was even tougher and we were all sweat once we reached the top. Our porter smiled at us while he already relaxed with a cigarette beside his donkey.

Some hours and dozens of pictures later we had cycled into the Tiger leaping gorge and reached a small hamlet called walnut grove. We found a beautiful small guest house with a lovely terrace directly looking into the gorge and onto peaceful wheat fields. The gorge was so narrow in this spot that we were overwhelmed by the sheer size of the grey and rocky wall in front of us. We enjoyed the scenery for the rest of the day sipping tasty nana mint tea and writing diary.
From tomorrow on we would leave our cycles and hike through the gorge