Tiger Leaping Gorge
Yunnan Province, China
June 2018
At a maximum depth of nearly 4,000 metres this is one of the deepest canyons in the world. We came here because there’s a two-day hike along the top of the canyon which we read about in our guidebook. I was really scared of doing this hike, and I spent hours leading up to the arrival in Qiaotou reading the few English-language blog posts I could find when I used my VPN on my phone to google things. I read them over and over, trying to judge how scary it would be. It’s famously steep and slippery in the rain, and there’s a section that is called the 28 bends that is just uphill switchbacks for hours. I kind of pretended to myself in the lead up to arriving in the town where the hike begins, that I was game to do this hike, because I knew how much Nico wanted to do it. But over breakfast on the day of the hike I cried into my oatmeal (not joking) and said I really didn’t want to do it. My toes and heels were covered in blisters from walking in the rain in Dali and I was scared. I hate heights, a lot a lot. So Nico set off to do the hike, and I agreed to find my way to the endpoint of the hike. I walked the low road for a while, I hitchhiked the next part, and then I got picked up by the son of the people who ran the guest house at the end of the hiking trail. I got to enjoy a glorious two days in that guest house eating delicious home cooked meals and drinking beer and reading and meeting other travelers and looking at the mountains and the canyon and the Jinsha river and drawing. Knowing I wasn’t hiking just made it even sweeter.