We left the Tea horse guest house at about 9am and got up to the point where we were in the sun at about 10am, as soon as the sun gets on you its t'shirt and shorts weather again. Our second day of hiking wasn't as tough as the first day but still definately a challenge. We stopped at a few other guest houses on the way just for a break and a cup of green tea. Got down to Jane's guest house, which is the end of the main trek, in time for lunch. Had a bite to eat there and then decided we would take the ladders down to the river at middle tiger leaping gorge. We had to pay a pound each to get down the ladders which as you've probably seen from the pictures, they wouldn't be allowed in the UK. They were fairly sturdy though and it was definately worth the climb down to see the gorge from the bottom. Unfortunately its hard to see the scale of the gorge from the photo's. Its 2000m from the river up to the top of the peaks!
We carried on back up out of the gorge to Sean's guest house, stopping on the way for a quick dip in a pond to cool off! The original plan was to leave the next day but we decided to stay instead, we hiked up to the bamboo forest, we had a guide from the hostel for the first section and she took us to her grandparents house for a cup of tea. It was the grandfathers 73rd birthday and they invited us to stop on the way back down for dinner with them. We got up to the waterfall at the bamboo forest (suprisingly little bamboo) and had a little paddle in the water to get some better pictures, the water was cold enough that it physically hurt when your feet were in it.
We went back down to the hostel, bought a few bottles of wine for the birthday boy and climbed back up to the party. They had slaughtered a goat for the meal, see pictures. The food was amazing and they kept plying us with the local wheat moonshine. It was a little too easy to drink and Paul and Colm were a little bit merry on the walk back down to the hostel.
The day after we didn't really get much done apart from a little walk. It was nice just to relax in the gorge itself though. The day after that we got a minibus back to the start of the trek to pick up our bags and then it was on to Shangri-La. We had been warned that it was absolutely freezing there but it wasn't too bad. We hired bikes again, its definately one of the better ways to see areas. Some americans in the hostel we were in invited us out to a local bar with all the local tibetan dancing going on, we had a go at it but it was a lot harder than it looked, had a great time there though.
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