Tips for Chinese camping, hiking, and outdoor adventure
Just back from an action-packed high-adventure trip in China’s SW Yunnan province. The geographically isolated province is known for its varied minority cultures and stunning mountain scenery. We went there with the intention of experiencing both. The entire country has the first week of October off every year. The holiday doesn’t really have any historical significance other than being a semiannual opportunity for 1.3 billion people to simultaneously take to the road, rail, and skies. Against others’ cautioning, we hit the tourist route for Yunnan. I figured, with enough miles under boot, we could escape the burgeoning crowd that would advance on Dali and Lijiang city – the quaint old towns that are often the destination of many vacationing Chinese tourists.
We stocked up on Chinese camping gear prior to our departure intending to save a few yuan on hotels and spend a few days in the “wilderness”. Unfortunately in China, you’re never too far from civilization. Regardless, we managed a rather unforgettable trip – see photos here (sorry if you’re trying to access these photos from China – Flickr is STILL blocked but you can download a plugin for Firefox that gets around that). Based on the stories below, we offer up several tips for those that are considering similar backpacking, hiking, or otherwise outdoor adventure trips in China.
Graveyard Shift
We spent our first two days in Yunnan in the Bai minority town of Dali – a pleasant old walled city on the banks of one of China’s largest lakes, Erhai (so named because it supposedly resembles an “ear”). We visited Chongsheng temple, took a trip out to the Bai village of Xizhou, and then found ourselves with an extra day on our hands. We had planned to only spend one day in Dali but the mass migration of tourists to the city caused a sudden shortage in transportation to Lijiang. Faced with the opportunity for a little more exploring, we bought a pair of chairlift tickets up the nearby Cangshan mountain range.
We packed some warm clothes knowing the mountain would be a bit chillier than the Erhai valley below. It was about 3:00pm. We figured we may as well spend a few hours hiking around on the mountain’s well-marked trails till the chairlift closed at 6:30. To our surprise, when we arrived at the top, the lift operators informed us that the lift would close that day at 5:30. We had a little over two hours to cover whatever we could along the 8 km trail that ran between the lift and another cable car on the other side of the mountain. We set off for the 9 Dragon Lady Pools – i.e. a waterfall.
Along the way, we gave up the idea of ever making it back to take the chairlift. We figured we might make it in time for the cablecar. Our guidebook also mentioned the option to take horses or even hike any of many trails that scale the mountain. Once we’d seen the falls, it was 6:30. We had seen another couple coming down just as we were climbing up to the highest of the 9 pools. They were probably 20 minutes or so ahead of us. Upon returning to the main trail, we stopped to chat with a local woman who makes a living selling food and drinks to starving and thirsty hikers. She explained to us that both mechanized means of returning down the mountain were now closed. She recommended that we hike back a couple km and take the horse trail back down. The couple before us, fortunately, had hired horses that were waiting for them at this junction. We set out for the trail. The lady informed us that it would start getting dark at about 7:30. We knew we had to hurry.
Any seasoned hiker would be getting nervous at this point. The horse trail was exactly that. A steep, rocky, slippery, meandering mud crevice meant for creatures with four legs and thick hooves. We clambered down in the twilight. Temperatures dropped and we donned our fleece jackets. Then the trail split into two trails. Squinting through the dark forest, we picked what appeared to be the more worn trail. Then it split again… and again… and again till it was too dark to tell nor care which one was the actual trail. The horse trail at one point merged with a stream and we found ourselves slipping and sliding down a muddy slope hanging on to the high grass as we continuously wiped each other out.
Soon it was completely dark and we’d been tripping and sliding down the mountain for almost two hours. As we struggled to find anything that resembled a trail till we managed to lose any trace of a path altogether. We flailed our arms grabbing anything to keep our slick running shoes from slipping. We grasped trees, thorn bushes, each other, and then… I grabbed a wall! There in the middle of this dark, thick forest was a wall – made of stone at about waist height. All around it was cubic in form and curved on top. I peered closer straining to see through the starlight. It was a gravestone. I looked around. We were sliding down this mountain through a sprawling hillside graveyard.
Mountains. Lost. Dark. Cold. Foreign land. In a graveyard. We tried not to think about it. We spotted some lights off in the distance and decided to plunge through the thick, tall foliage in their direction. All of a sudden, my foot fell through the grass into water up to my calf. We turned around. I sat down and slowly inched my legs down the mountain in front of me making sure there was solid ground ahead.
Somehow, slowly and cautiously, we managed to make our way to a massive 10-foot wall that surrounded a crop field. We waded through the low crop till the ground fell out from under us where there was an enormous crater and beyond it, a lake blocking our way. We doubled back. We headed back up the mountain, circling the crop and making our way to what appeared to be the lights of the farmer’s house. Surely, there had to be a road leading there. As we approached the lights, we realized it was a high barb-wired fenced government compound. We low-crawled past an illuminated window trying our best to blend into the surrounding farm.
We made our way around the high-mountain Chinese military base to the main entrance and slowly started to creep down the road away from the gate. Then, a ferocious guard dog threw himself at the gate snarling, spitting, barking and scaring the living duzi out of us. We scurried down the road as fast as we could hoping no one would come to the gate. The dog continued to bark. He barked so persistently loud that he alerted an entire pack of stray and wild dogs down the trail. They rose and approached the road making a raucous racket. We kept our eyes straight ahead and moved as fast as we could away from their growls.
The road eventually lead past another gate guard (who we snuck past as he was asleep at his post) and then in the back of Dali University! We approached two young female students (who I am sure would have run away at seeing my haggled self if it hadn’t been for AMD) and asked them how to get to the main gate. 10 minutes later and we had the university guardman call us a cab that took us back to Dali.
We laughed about it over a satisfying meal and many tall beers back on Yangren Jie in the center of town. As we sat there recalling our terrifying experience, it started pouring rain and continued raining for the rest of the night.
TIP #1 – When hiking in the afternoon, bring a flashlight (I ended up using the luminescence of my cell phone touch screen).
TIP #2 – Despite what guidebooks say, check in the local town for the latest transportation/closing times.
Guesthouse Galore
Following our experience in Dali, we figured we were all warmed up for the highlight of the trip – a 28 km hike through the deepest gorge in the world – Tiger-Leaping Gorge just north of Lijiang city. We caught an early morning bumpy bus to Lijiang. Due to the delay in our plans, we decided to visit Lijiang on our way back down to Dali on the way home. Arriving in Lijiang at noon, we discovered there were no more busses to the town at the entrance to the gorge. We hired a car outside the station that would take us the next three hours to the gorge. It started to rain and three hours turned to four and we finally reached the gorge at 5:00. We found the start of the trail at about 5:30 and set off on the trek. According to hand-drawn map, it was only 2 hours to the first guesthouse on the trail – Naxi Guesthouse. However, the map also indicated that it was 8 km to this point. It didn’t matter. We were fully prepared carrying everything we needed on our backs. Back in Guangzhou we picked up sleeping bags, a tent, and other inclimate weather accessories. We filled up with 3 litres of water and had enough snacks to last us several days. Even if we didn’t make it to the guesthouse by dark, we were prepared to stay the night in our tent.
Despite our heavy packs, stops for countless stunning photos, the advertised 2-hour hike clinging to the northern gorge cliff actually ended up being just about that. We made it to the first guesthouse just as the sun was setting. The guidebooks recommend 2-3 days for this trek. They even say that “one maniac” did it in a day. We woke up the next morning at a leisurely hour (the Chinese guests were up before the sun and off on the trail not soon after that), had a delicious pancake breakfast, took some photos, and headed down the trail not long after 8:00. We were probably two of the only hikers with full packs. Many Chinese tourists had little more than a gym bag and their loafers. The foreigners, of course, know to carry a little more but we, were by far, the most over-prepared of the trekkers. We had enough cold-weather clothes to get us through the snow. We ended up hiking in t-shirts the whole time.
We made it to “halfway” at about 1:00, took our time and ate a fantastic meal of Naxi sandwiches. The view at this guesthouse is so amazing that we considered just calling it a day an spending the night there. But we pressed on. We managed to pass just about everyone that had started before us that morning. And our packs ensured we weren’t moving too fast. The gorge is certainly the highlight of any trip to northern Yunnan. The scenery is fantastic and the experience is so unlike most other destinations in China. The number of tourists on the route is few and the trail is delightfully undeveloped with just the right amount of charm at the cute little family-run guesthouses along the way. We made it out of the gorge at about 6:00 that evening. We stayed at Sean’s guesthouse in Walnut Grove nursing our sore muscles with Naxi pizza, warm brandy-laced Yunnan coffee, and warm showers.
TIP #3 – In order to *really* camp in China, you need to get way off the guidebook path. We were over-prepared for the gorge trek secretly hoping we might have the chance to unroll our tent. Most “trekking” in China is often within a few hours of a guesthouse or village. A tent is rarely needed and if you speak Chinese, finding a spot on many a welcoming village house floor for your sleeping bag is very easy. Do the gorge – it’s awesome!
Buscamping
Ever thirsty for a real China camping experience, we headed up north from the gorge to Baishui Tai – beautiful limestone terraces formed by the slow trickle of spring mountain water down the hillside – one of only a few places in the world with this geological phenomenon. We had planned to do a two-day hike there through the Haba valley but opted for motorized transport instead. We carved through the mountain passes the 5 hours up to Shangri-la. The government recently renamed the town of Zhongdian after the imaginary land in the fictional story, The Lost Horizon. Nevertheless, this Sichuan minority wilderness is amazing. We asked the driver to drop up off at the south gate of Bita Hai, in the heart of the Shangri-la countryside.
Despite what the guidebook says, the distance from the gate to the lake is really about 12 km. We separately hitched rides in two Chinese cars headed into the park for the afternoon. We grabbed a handful of roasted potatoes at the parking lot above the lake and headed down the old-growth forest path to the lake. We were excited to finally use our brand-new tent in a relatively remote piece of the pristine Yunnan wilderness.
When we reached the bottom, we were amazed by the unspoilt beauty of still, blue Bita lake and the surrounding wildlife. We planned to hike around the lake to the west entrance and set up camp somewhere along the way. In the morning we would continue on and flag down a passing tractor on the western road out of the park. However, the lake appeared to have burst its banks recently and the meadow that surrounds the southern bank is now more of a marsh.
We asked a few of the local horsemen about the trail around the lake. They all gave us vague, conflicting directions. Finally we made the smart decision to hire a friendly minority woman who was selling the opportunity to take photos atop her 60+ year-old yak. At the right price, she hurriedly put her yak out to pasture and bundled up her basket on her back and headed off with us. We tip-toed across the marsh on strategically placed logs and rocks that occasionally rocked over sending our feet into the mud. Our female guide was obviously much too familiar with the area and nimbly bounded and danced ahead. ABD were almost at a full sprint, our heavy packs awkwardly bouncing around. The quicksand mud and confusing fragments of trails leading off in all directions made us very glad we hired the guide to show us the way. In little over an hour, we had made it halfway around the lake.
The whole journey, we chatted with the lady and she kept saying how impressed she was that we were not afraid of the tigers and bears that lurked in these forests. She conveniently offered us the service of her home for a night’s stay to avoid these perils. We insisted that we were here to camp. She suggested that we cross to the other side of the lake where the path was more worn and closer to the water – claiming the ferocious beasts “would not go to that side”. Confused by her warnings and delighted by her efficiency in getting us around the lake so fast, we heeded her advice and climbed up on an elevated path that circles the other half of the lake to the west entrance. As the sun started to set, we looked around for a nice grassy spot to camp. The lady even suggested we just camp right on the trail since “it would be safer.”
Just as we were about to choose a nice spot just next to a cluster of Tibetan chorten, we spotted some other hikers headed the opposite direction. As they approached, we realized they weren’t hikers at all but park police. They immediately turned around and started walking with us, stopping when we stopped to take pictures, admiring when we admired the view, and taking their time when we took ours. Finally, I announced at one point, that we would be stopping and they could continue on without us. We would spend the night in our tent right here. They didn’t keep going. In fact they insisted that we were not allowed to camp there (despite my guidebook and our driver’s comments). They informed us they would escort us out of the park. It was still a good 8 km hike to the west entrance. So ABD and the local police set off on a lovely hike together – BD arguing with them the whole time trying to convince them that camping would be ok. At one point, one policeman asked me if I had a gun. I figured this was a trap – if I said no, he’d say we had no way to defend ourselves from the “nasty bears and black tigers” – if I said yes, he’d arrest me for illegal possession of firearms. Either way, it was a trick question. I laughed and asked him if I could have his. He admitted he didn’t have one and pushed us on down the trail.
We finally made it out of the park just as it turned completely dark. We managed to pick up many more lagging tourists (none of whom thought they would just set up a tent and camp). At the west entrance was a shuttle bus waiting to take the tourists to their cars and us to our… to our… wait, our driver was long gone and we hadn’t planned to catch transportation to Zhongdian till the morning when tour busses would be passing along the busy road all day. Now it was 8:00 pm and all the tourists were back in town boozing it up in downtown Shangri-la. We begged pity on policemen. They again insisted that we couldn’t set up our tent until we were out of the park. 30 minutes later, we reached the entrance and dropped off the other tourists. The bus driver parked the bus in the depot yard, turned around and looked at us. He said, hey why don’t you just sleep in my bus? ABD looked at each other, looked at the bus driver, looked at each other again, and hesitantly said… “uhhh, hao de” (translation: uhhh, ok).
So we joined the policemen and the bus driver in the depot kitchen for a lively meal where we sat on little wooden stools and the men’s minority wives served us heaping spoons of rice, vegetable goulash, and spicy chicken stirfry in dirty porcelain bowls. All the while the carved remains of an entire pig lay staring (literally) over our shoulder on a butcher table behind us. After dinner, we said our goodnights and stumbled across the yard to our bus. We then spent a remarkably comfortable night on the floor of a park bus at 10,000 ft in the Shangri-la wilderness. Priceless.
Tip #4 – If you still think you’re going to go camping in China, try to get the most reliable and up-to-date info on camping regulations. Apparently, according to other tourists at the lake, the park had been open to camping last year. The policemen assured us it would be open for camping next year. Who knows.
TIP #5 – Almost every major city in China has a “camping club”. They meet every weekend to do just that. It’s probably best to go camping with local Chinese to get an idea of good places to go. Unfortunately, if you rely on guidebooks to find your camping destinations, they’ll inevitably be overrun with tourists and decidedly not what you’re look for in an outdoor camping experience. On the other hand, if you pick a relatively remote corner with little information about regulations and local wildlife, you’re taking a big risk. Best to go with Chinese first. Then again, you could always just bring your own bus.