Crouching Sarah, Hidden Parasite

Rather than make this post about the two days of crouching over the wonderful chinese squat toilets trying to recover from my first parasite of the trip, I wanted to contribute to Mike's great blog myself by writing about our second amazing day in Tiger Leaping Gorge.

After an excellent breakfast of fresh flat bread cooked with egg, tomato and green peppers, we said goodbye to our hosts and set off for the "hardest part of the trek" the 24 bends (I counted 31). Basically, this involved walking staight up to the ridge following a series of switchbacks and after the Olympic training I've already had on this trip, I was pleasantly surprised to find it wasn't that hard. Of course this was only 2 hours into what promised to be at least an 8 hour hike.

The walk was stunning. Around each corner a new view of the snow capped mountains, farm fields, horses, cows and goats (the new monkeys). We had a map for the walk, but the trail was pretty obvious and the ambiance was not improved by the graffiti on every second rock welcoming us to stay at Woody's or Tina's guest house. We stopped for lunch at the half way guest house and my legs were starting to feel tired. Don't worry, only 4 hours to go.







By the time we had almost arrived at Walnut grove, the place where we planned to stay, not at Tina's or Woody's, but at a guest house run by a guy named Sean (who we picked because of his lack of advertising and interest in preserving the grove from rampant development), Mike suggested we head up another way through a bamboo forest and by a waterfall. At this stage we're literally 10 minutes from Seans guest house and who knows how long this new trail, if we even found it, would take. Guess which
way we went?


The waterfall was beautiful, the hike straight up through the bamboo forest would have been better had we not already been walking for 8.5 hours that day. Exhausted and cranky (me) we finally made it to Seans. We had a huge meal, enjoyed some other people's company and stared in awe at the sheer cliff face opposite us. Amazing. We also enjoyed the brainteaser that is Sean's menu.


Showered and rejuvenated we went to sleep, excited to spend a day in Walnut grove, hopefully with only minimal exertion, ie the energy needed to lift my book, or bring a cold Dali beer to my lips... but really, on Mike's tour of China I figured my odds weren't too good.