The Middle Rapids

The sun rose at Yacha Village at around 10 o'clock but I got up early and chose to start trekking to the next village. I thought I should be in Qiaotou at least before 4 in the afternoon and I still had to hike down to the middle rapids. So I had a quick breakfast of Naxi bread and Yunnan coffee and headed north. I set off at 8:45 and although the sun wasn't up yet, it was bright enough for me to see the trail. The morning mist was chilly but I was already perspiring after 20 minutes of walking. I walked all alone in the middle of nowhere surrounded by massive rocky mountains and deep ravines and I thought if those mountains were alive, I could have been easily engulfed into their guts and nobody would have ever thought I'd ever been there, such is a reality of life underscored by the immensity of those mountains. I treaded on constricted pathways mile after mile until I came to Bendiwan Village an hour later. That was the halfway point from Qiaotou to Walnut Groove. I kept my pace and overtook at least three groups of hikers who stayed overnight at Bendiwan. I ascended the last climb before Tina's Guesthouse and was rewarded with an amazing view of Yulong Xue Shan from top to bottom. The river flowed furiously hundreds of meters right below a ledge along the second highest path! Then it was downhill all the way to Tina's Guesthouse at the low path. Soon, I had lunch at half past eleven. I lingered for a little while and tried to shake off my weariness from the more than two hour hike and hit the road once more to the middle rapids. I wasn't really sure what I was expecting to see or do at the rapids, but the attraction of the mysterious was so inviting and so I had to satisfy my curiousity. The guidebooks suggested several places to start from but it was still an hour's hike to Woody's which was said to have the best view of the gorge. I crossed a bridge over a very deep canyon and hiked farther down the road until I saw a signboard showing directions to the river. The gushing sound of the river can be heard from the highway and the river can actually be seen from some points of the road so I thought it shouldn't take long for me to walk down to the river and be back in time for Qiaotou. It took me a little more than two hours going down and coming up from the river! It looked so close yet so very far away. Halfway down into the river, I was ready to give up. I couldn't see nor hear any signs of human life around me and if I got suddenly ill down below, I wasn't sure if I could climb back to the highway, yet there was this part of me that kept cheering me up and urging me to go on. Then out of nowhere, there was this bearded man perched on a rock, just sitting there gazing at the foliage beneath him. I walked on and followed the trail, at least happy to see another human being in the depth of this gorge. Then suddenly, I came upon a very nice platform complete with a rock table and stool overlooking the rapids. The view was remarkable. If only I could stay longer and let everything sink in, but then again, there's a bus I got to catch. As I was resting and enjoying the vista, a girl came out from a hut nearby and asked for coverage fee. I realized the trail and the platform were made by the family and so I paid 10 RMB. I asked if I could drink the water running from a spring near the platform and she gave me boiled water and asked if I wanted tea with it. I readily took her offer minus the tea. After a while, the girl showed me how to get to the other side of the ravine to get to the shortest climb back to the highway. I went along as told and found the trail was so tight and dangerous but there was no way I was going back to the trail I used coming down. I held on to the precipice with the river practically under my feet several meters down. I edge my way around the crag until I got to safer grounds. There was a makeshift hut by the banks of the river but there was nobody to ask about directions, only a three year old child playing with the dirt inside the hut. Soon I saw people upstream, on a rock but I wasn't excited about walking that way. I was too tired to be going down and coming back this way again having seen a pathway going up. Instead, I went on and climbed the path above me. Not until I was at the top an hour later that I realized I did the steepest path in all of the suggested trails from the middle rapids! No wonder I felt like a cliffhanger, pulling my body up on the face of a huge rock. The most dangerous part was a climb on a more or less 20 feet high steel ladder made out of thin steel bars that stood almost as straight as a street light post. And I kept on thinking I must have gone crazy doing all these by myself. But then again, I didn't want to dwell on what if's because I knew there were always reasons to everything going on with my life and the best way I could deal with them was to look at them on the positive side. That, I could say with my extraordinary passage through the Tiger Leaping Gorge.