Tiger Leaping Gorge

We were greeted the next morning by this scene from the hotel lobby. As you can imagine the mountain dominates the landscape.

The next day we took a trip to see "Tiger Leaping Gorge". This involves a trip through the countryside and over a mountain.

As I have mentioned before, farm fields are small by American standards. There is also still a huge amount of manual labor involved. On the other hand, every stalk or piece of straw is gathered for animal feed or fuel. That said, they are obviously burning something in the field.

Here a herd of goats cleans up a field.

Much of the drive is along the Jinsha River (Golden Sand River) with beautiful views of the snow capped mountains. The air was amazingly clean and fresh, too.

The Jade Dragon Snow Mountain has only been climbed once (by an American team) according to Wikipedia. Our tour guide said it had never been climbed because of the nature of the rock.

This little girl was selling fruit on the side of the street.

Click on the picture to see what she is studying.

Here is the beginning of Tiger Leaping Gorge. The Jinsha River is part of the Yangtze River system which is the 4th longest in the world.

A legend holds that a tiger once jumped from one side to the other using the stone in the middle as a stepping stone. The local tourist bureau put up a statue of a tiger for reference. Click to enlarge.

The gorge is not considered navigable and a number of people have died trying.

That is Shangri-la on the other side of the river.

Here is Margot about 16 hour after arriving in Beijing from the U.S.

I think this means move quickly so a rock doesn't fall on you.

This is supposed to look like the teeth in a tiger's mouth.

Can you guess what these are? Click to enlarge and put your guess in the comments.











Here is a short video.