In Pictures: China's Tiger Leaping Gorge

Fyodor Dostoevsky was a perceptive observer of both man and nature.  The Russian novelist was a brilliant writer as well, and if you have not read anything by him perhaps you should close this photo essay  and pick up something of his instead.  And if you do indeed read Dostoevsky, and then late one night find yourself staring up at the heavens, bursting with stars, from the bottom of China's Tiger Leaping Gorge, perhaps you will be reminded of the words below.  You might even discover that a night like this will be the best one you spent in China.

"Gentlemen...look around you at the gifts of God, the clear sky, the pure air, the tender grass, the birds; nature is beautiful and sinless, and we, only we, are godless and foolish, and we don't understand that life is a paradise, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep."
   - from The Brothers Karamazov

The Yangtze (seen here entering the gorge) is the world's third longest river, surpassed in length only by the Nile and Amazon.  Getting its start high up on the Tibetan Plateau, it flows 4,000 miles to the East China Sea and is forced to its narrowest point halfway down the 16 kilometer long Tiger Leaping Gorge

After several hours of hiking, we rested our heaving lungs for a few minutes here in First Bend Village.

The late afternoon light turned the landscape golden.  Hard to believe this was the second week of December.

With only an hour or so left until we reached our guesthouse for the night, we stopped again to look back upon the Yangtze.

Flags were tied to the balcony of Half Way Guesthouse, where I got a room with a warm blanket for the equivalent of $1.25.  Tiger Leaping Gorge, like many other places in southwest China, is popular with travelers.  While I usually travel alone, I did this three-day hike with two Swiss newlyweds studying law in Singapore, a Dutch woman living in Singapore, and an Englishman living in Canada.

A 16-year-old villager, employed by the guesthouse,  looks down from a room.

And later serves me breakfast on the porch.

Day two of the hike began with a reminder that technology reaches most everywhere these days, in some form or another.

More afternoon light

An hour out of the Half Way Guesthouse, a bend in the trail brought me upon a woman selling soft drinks, juice, and water.  In the next hour of hiking I didn't see anyone else.  Then I came upon a man and woman, walking in opposite directions on the hillside...

This is the narrowest point on the Yangtze.  At this section of the gorge, sunlight penetrates to the bottom for only about 90 minutes each day.  While my fellow-trekers would hike back up the trail to another guesthouse, I would sleep at Sandy's guesthouse (note the red roof in the upper-left of the photo).  Other than the caretaker, a 30-year-old mother with two daughters, nobody else would be staying here tonight.  She helped me learn a few Chinese phrases in exhange for my help in pronouncing English phrases she had written in her notebook, which included "I am delighted to meet you" and, oddly, "I'm drunk."

At night, after the caretaker had gone to bed, I sat on a boulder jutting out over the river.  Here I smacked into the face of sheer wonder.  Through this narrow, oval-shaped crack in the earth I looked out into the universe, ablaze with stars.  In the darkness the river roared to my right, about fifty feet below.  I watched two satellites moving rapidly on a collision course, but then pass safely.  And just when I thought it couldn't get better, I instinctively jerked my head as a falling star sliced down the length of the crevice.  It lasted so long and its trail was so bright that I turned my neck a full 45 degrees to follow it.  Never, ever had I seen a meteorite travel so far and feel so close.  I did not even know it was possible.

A seldom-used secondary trail skirted the cliff edge downriver from the guesthouse.  I began my third and final day in the gorge with a three-hour excursion down the rickety path.  I don't speak Chinese, but I imagine the sign warns that, if you're not pretty darn careful, you're going to slip and die further up the trail, where it got so narrow at one point -- 18 inches -- that for several feet  I scooted on my butt.

And I couldn't help but wonder if "we, only we, are godless and foolish, and we don't understand that life is a paradise, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, [and] we shall embrace each other and weep."