Are We There Yet.

Today is a travel day with a number of stops along the way before the promised Shangri La . All the stops involve the Yangste, Yangze, Chang Jiang, all names for the longest river in Asia, third largest river in the world. With a length of over 6,400 kilometres, it begins its life as run off from glaciers of the Tibetan Plateau before exiting 6,400 kilometres later into the East China Sea near Shanghai.

Our first stop is the first bend in the Yangste. As with all Chinese tourists sites, a back story is included with the view. It seems that three sister rivers (Nu River, Lancang River, Jinsha River) met here and had a disagreement. The Nu and Lancang Rivers decided to go south while their sister Jinsha River decided to seek her love and fame going to the east. This persistent (their words, not mine) little river transformed itself into the first bend of the Yangtse. Basically, a million years ago the river went left instead of right. Right would have seen it flow through Vietnam or Laos before exiting into the ocean. Going left, it became the mighty Yangste River.

The Yangste is home to over 1/3 of China's 1,300,000,000 people and provides water, food, electricity, transportation and sadly sanitary disposal to all.





Our final stop of the day was the Leaping Tiger Gorge. Here the river narrows to less than 25 metres. (79 feet for you Americans) The gorge is a must see for Chinese tourists and it was a busy place that day. For those of you BC readers, think Hells Gate. It is not a place for the mobility impaired as it involved going down then back up about 500 steps. Though if you didn't feel like walking back up, you could rent a sedan chair and two burly porters to carry you back up the 500 steps. Pretty impressive to watch these guys in action.

And of course, there is a back story. Legend has it that a tiger was being hunted and he leaped to safety by first leaping to a rock (see background of picture) located in the middle of the gorge before leaping to the opposite bank. Hence the name, Leaping Tiger Gorge. Very impressive as well as noisy, watching all the water roar through that little gap. The stairs were a nice workout but I must admit to being tempted to ride back up to the top in a sedan chair. Costs was 100 RMB or about 13 bucks. OOOH, so tempting but too embarrassing to consider. . Shangri La here we come.