Lost on Planet China - J. Maarten Troost [104]
“Okay,” I said as we found ourselves in the midst of a cluster of mules. “I think this is the beginning of the 24 Bends.”
“What’s that?” Jack asked.
“The 24 Bends are the really hard part.”
“I don’t know if I can do this,” he said, panting and sweating in the warm sun.
A donkey keeper offered to take us up.
“No, thank you. But you might have a customer here,” I said, pointing to Jack.
“I’m really thinking about it.”
“I know you are. And the moment you get on that donkey, I’m getting my camera out. Republicans on donkeys. Always a good picture.”
We headed up. The 24 Bends, as it turned out, are poorly named. There are not 24 Bends. There are about a hundred bends, steep switchbacks that crisscrossed the mountain. Perhaps there weren’t actually one hundred bends. But it certainly felt like it. A few others struggled up the switchbacks with us, including a fashionably dressed Chinese woman who looked utterly miserable as she lagged behind her partner.
I put my head down and powered up the trail, which was covered with donkey shit. Hiking up steep inclines is all about momentum, and soon the two dozen hikers around us had clustered into small groups according to their speed. Jack, I noticed, had fallen behind with the slowest group. I did not linger. He’s with other people, I thought. If he needed help, they’d help. Probably. I put my head down and marched on, switchback after switchback. After forty-five minutes or so, I stopped for a water break and settled down on a rock to take in the scenery, which was breathtaking in its awesomeness. Somewhere far, far below were the churning rapids of the Yangtze as it rushed through a chasm not more than seventy feet across. Four rafters had once tried to run these rapids. They were never seen again. I wondered what the tiger thought when he’d succeeded in jumping the river. Probably oops. The other side of the river was nothing less than a sheer, 6,000-foot, absolutely terrifying-looking cliff.
Finally, Jack arrived. On a donkey. I was beside myself with mirth.
“Didn’t you see me waving?” he asked.
“Were you waving? I couldn’t tell. You were so far below, I couldn’t tell the difference between you and that really unhappy Chinese lady.”
Jack paid the donkey owner. The donkey pooped. I had not read about the donkey poop on the high trail above Tiger Leaping Gorge, which is surprising really, because it is a trail of shit. Sure, the vistas are vast and beautiful. The hike is satisfyingly strenuous. Periodically, it can be very, very scary up above Tiger Leaping Gorge. All this I had read. I had never read, however, an account that mentioned the colossal amounts of donkey crap along the way. So I would like that to be my contribution to the literature on Tiger Leaping Gorge. There’s donkey shit. Lots of it. Now you know.
We continued to climb, stopping often, but after twenty minutes Jack decided that he could go no farther.
“I can’t do this. I don’t know. I can’t breathe.”
“The air is a little thinner up here.”
“I…My head hurts. I don’t know. I can’t go on.”
“Look,” I said. “This is the hardest part. But we’re almost at the top, and then it should flatten out. If you’re really struggling, we’ll just hail another donkey.”
Slowly, we continued to climb, until finally the trail evened out. And then, around a bend, it was my turn to fall apart.
The trail had been carved across a cliff that plunged thousands of feet to the river below. Every year, a few hikers go toppling off. Probably right here, I reflected. Because this looked like an excellent place to fall off a mountain. I was achingly familiar with the knowledge that, now and then, shit does happen. People do fall. Indeed, once while clambering on some rocks above a waterfall in southwestern Turkey, I’d slipped and found myself hurtling over said waterfall,