China through my eyes: Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yunnan Province

Tiger Leaping Gorge is a beautiful hike in Yunnan province and has been on my China bucket list since last summer- you can google it on your own, my internet is too annoying. I found some great people at the hostel I was staying at in Lijiang to do the hike with over 2 days, and along the way we met a whole bunch more awesome people. It was one of the best experiences I've had in China so far- just so, incredibly beautiful (sorry not very sorry about too many pictures)

We took a van from the city of Lijiang at 7:20 in the morning. Quite a beautiful place to wake up in

The start of the trail... not very promising

But soon we were up in the mountains and forgot the disappointing start

all the trails, like veins

Some Chinese families hire a local with mules to take them the whole trip.

It's difficult to show the scale of this place through pictures.... it's vast.

Seemed as great a place as any to take a quick rest

Check out that waterfall

It's hard to show through pictures the massive scale of these mountains... it was so amazing.

Halfway Inn, where we stayed the night.

Best place to have some beers and share stories

Good morning, mountains

Strange creek, all white.

The trail

Works good enough

again.. the pictures simply don't show how enormous this gorge is

The hike down. If you zoom in, you can see someone walking down about halfway.

The water was SO violent and hynotic. We sat there quite a while just staring at the ferocity of it all. Apparently in the eighties some group tried to do white water rafting down the gorge and were never seen again. Nobody has tried since. This is also where the fable of the "Tiger Leaping Gorge" comes from, where some tiger leaped from some rock on one side to another rock on the other side. I'd tell you more if I knew more.