Taming the Tiger

Many moons ago, in one of my first ever travel stories, I wrote about an adventure in wild Yunnan, where I hiked the Tiger Leaping Gorge and met the mysterious Margo

I’d been sat in Hongqiao Airport for hours, waiting for the delayed plane to Kunming. A flight delay is never a good way to start a holiday. However, the prospect of a nine-day adventure tour was enough to offset the inconvenience. Indeed, the very thought of getting out of predicable Shanghai produced an unfamiliar sense of real excitement. 

The trip was organized by the aptly-named Intrepid Travel company, which focuses on small group tours usually led by locally-based guides, from family friendly adventures, to action packed trips. Traveling on my own, I had signed up for the ‘Tiger Leaping Gorge’ tour, a week and a half in wild Yunnan down in China’s southwest. Our flight arrived in Kunming, the tropical capital of Yunnan, late at night, and a combination of tiredness and disorientation led me to arrive at the wrong hotel, before finding my correct digs an hour later. Waking up for breakfast, I made small chat with my new travel companions, and the dozen of us hopped on a bus to Lijiang, home of the Naxi ethnic minority, a matrilineal (female-led) society descended from Tibetan nomads. 

The Old Town area of Lijiang, founded more than 800 years ago, is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and is honestly stunning, with charming cobbled streets, quaint tiled-roof buildings, and red lanterns hanging from the street lamps. You wouldn’t know it, but about a third of the town had been destroyed by an earthquake in February 1996, then subsequently restored (although controversially, the local government also decided to add new sections to the ‘old city’, a move designed to accommodate more tourists).

After spending the night in a rustic hotel, the next day we headed to the, rather wordy, ‘Jade Dragon Snow Mountain Chinese Herbal Clinic’ in Baisha, the ancient capital of the Naxi people. The clinic is more simply known as ‘Dr Ho’s’, after self taught medic He Shixiu, who was something of an international celebrity before passing away in 2018, age 95 (a reflection, perhaps, of his skills). Over the years, he received thousands of curious foreigners, including former Monty Python Michael Palin for his 2004 BBC series Himalaya. Dr Ho’s examination and store room was piled high with brightly-colored buckets of herbs and powders. After a short examination, he took my pulse, had me stick out my tongue, and inquired after my eating habits. He then prescribed a dose of ‘healthy tea’ and some advice: “Be happy – happiness is the best medicine.”

Setting off with these words of wisdom, we headed to Shangri-La, located on a plateau some 3,200 meters above sea level. In fact, we were actually on our way to Zhongdian, a pleasant enough Tibetan town that was renamed in 2002 to attract tourists, a strategy that seems to have worked judging by the numbers we encountered. Be that as it may, Zhongdian boasts a spectacular medieval monastery, the Ganden Sumtseling Gompa, perched high above town (although we later learned the monastery was mostly razed during the Cultural Revolution and rebuilt later). Visitors choose between the steep steps leading directly up, or the longer and winding road that provides more rewarding views of lush green pastures, distant peaks, and smiling monks on their way to pray. As sun set, we headed back to the old town and a communal dance beneath the stars.

Suffering the next morning from a combination of altitude and alcohol, we boarded the bus to our final destination, the evocatively named Tiger Leaping Gorge. Deeper than the Grand Canyon and almost 15 kilometers long, at its narrowest point the sharply-sided gorge measures just 25 meters across - this is the exact spot where, as legend has it, a fleeing tiger once jumped across the raging torrent to escape a hunter. Technically part of the Yangtze River (known locally as the Golden Sands River), many a risk-taker has died trying to navigate the rapids, which is why the best way to follow the river is not on it, but above it, on the hiking trail that runs the length of the gorge.

Following a hair-raising minibus ride, we disembarked at the Gorged Tiger Cafe in Qiaotou, where we met the cafe owner, locally-based Australian Margo Carter, who gave us some tips before we started our hike... At this point, I have to diverge from the original story and delve a little into the story of Margo Carter, the divisive Australian queen of Tiger Leaping Gorge. Having looked up her cafe to see if it was still open, I instead discovered she had died in mysterious circumstances while hiking solo in northwest Yunnan in 2009.

---

Originally from Bendigo, a city in central Victoria, Margo had gone traveling in China, visited this part of wild Yunnan, and moved there to live in the mid ‘90s. Settling down with local Tibetan Sean (Xia Shan Quan), she set up her cafe at one end of the gorge in Qiaotou, to complement the one he ran at ‘Walnut Grove’, the couple bookmarking the tourist traffic. Over the next 15 years, they saw numerous changes in this once isolated region, not least a road blasted into the side of the gorge, that allowed minibus-loads of Chinese daytrippers the chance to take in the scenery without the strain of walking. However, the hike, which I did in 2006, was mostly untouched, and Margo and Sean continued to make a steady living from the stream of backpackers coming through.

With her eccentric personality, she became a local personality to rival Dr Ho, and a mention in Lonely Planet brought even more business her way. By the time I visited she was separated from Sean, but the two still had a working relationship, and I remember thinking at that time that there was a story in this: ‘Love at the End of the Gorge’ (it’s one I never did write, and now never will). Sometime in late 2009, it seems Margo had decided to take on a difficult trek in the far north of Yunnan, around the holy Tibetan mountain of Kawa Karpo, accompanied only by her dog and a guide. Along the way she passed locally-based British trekking guide Richard Scotford, as recounted here:

His group were surprised to be passed by a lone Western woman traveling at speed (alone, that is, except for her dog and a guide with a horse, who was left trailing well to the rear) and they noted that she was only lightly clad for the trail. Not only that, but they were taken aback by how rude she was to the trekking group, refusing to talk with them at all during their brief encounter on the trail. Things got stranger later in the day when they saw her again and she chose to camp alongside them, but again was uncommunicative. That was until she started saying that she would ‘turn them in’ to the local authorities and warning them that they would be turned back at local police checkpoints found further up the Salween (Nujiang) valley and the local Tibetans would shun them. The group were unnerved by her unfriendly and bizarre behaviour (she would only talk to them in Chinese at one point) and her apparent threats. Margo left early the next day and they never saw her again.

A few days later, having spent uneventful time in the valley with friendly Tibetans, the group had made the difficult return journey over the pass, and descended to the first settlement, only to find Margo’s guide distraught having not seen her in two days. As she was so far ahead of him, he’d assumed she had made the crossing without him and carried on. As the search commenced for Margo, wild rumors abounded: some said she’d been murdered by Tibetan mushroom traders in a deal gone bad, others that she had gone up there to die. According to a few who had talked with her in Zhongdian before she began the trek, she had advised them to listen out for ‘some big news’. What is apparent though, is that she seemed underdressed and under-equipped for a tough hike, and in bad conditions it was easy to lose your way through the mountain peaks.

Margo’s body was discovered three weeks later - not by police, but by Sean, who had continued the search for her when the authorities had given up. She was found next to a large tree, a long way from the path she’d been traveling on, and much further up the mountain, possibly even as much as one week’s hike. Her dog, still alive, guarded her. The fact she was found uphill, when the first rule of being lost in the mountains is to head down, is odd, also the fact that she was an experienced hiker with vast regional knowledge. However, it’s just possible that, overconfident in her own abilities, she made a bad choice, picked the wrong path, became disorientated, and succumbed to the harsh environment. We will never know - but at least I got to know her a little.

---

Margo had been signed up by Intrepid to lead us on the two day hike through Tiger Leaping Gorge, striding ahead with her small dog by her side, both seemingly immune to the strenuous climbing our much younger group struggled with. After a few hours hike along a steadily-rising gradient, we reached the ‘28 Bends’, a tortuous sequence of twists and turns that rises almost vertically to a height of 2,660 meters. So tortuous that some of our number had to ride on the back of the horses accompanying us (who had no issue with the path). At the summit, out of breath, and with muscles on fire, the gorge appeared in all its majesty below. Thankfully, from that point it was downhill to our encampment for the night, the Tea-Horse Trade Guesthouse, a simple but well-run hostel that (from my own experience) has one of the best views from a toilet in China.

The next day, on a path so narrow that at several points we had to walk single file, we made our way gingerly down to Sean’s Guesthouse. During the four hour hike, we passed several herds of goats going in the opposite direction, causing me to hug the cliffside close, treading carefully over the slippery rocks along the trail, with the deep ravine on one side. The goats, however, didn’t seem bothered by the danger at all.

Finally, we arrived and were greeted by Sean, a Tibetan who has hosted adventurous travelers here since 1983. A super friendly and hospitable host, he provided us with welcome cold beer, and a somewhat disturbing vision of the future. He explained that the government was planning construction of two large dams, which would create a 200 kilometer reservoir and displace hundreds of thousands of people, turning Tiger Leaping Gorge into a stagnant lake (thankfully, the project was scrapped in 2007).

This sobering scenario stayed with me the next day as we boarded a minibus that took us back along the gorge to Qiaotou, and from there, on to Dali. More sobering still was the driver’s insistence on not using his brakes on the narrow dirt road that, at times, looked like it was only seconds from collapsing into the swirling waters far below. On the other hand, by not slowing down for anything, he had us back in town in just 30 minutes, over the same distance that had taken us a grueling eight hours on foot.

Once a haven for backpackers (they always pave the way for the rest of us), by the time of my visit Dali had been ‘upgraded’, boasting a new airport, and connected with the rest of China by highways and trains, the increased accessibility to the pretty heritage Old Town with its distinctive Bai architecture drawing the tourists by the busload. If nothing else, the hordes served as a reminder that my adventure was nearing its end. The next day, I boarded a bus for Kunming, and would soon be back in Shanghai, with just enough time for a beery night at the Cafe De Camel in the company of local expat celebrity Bike Mike and the city’s Chief of Police, but that’s another story altogether…