Remote, strikingly beautiful countryside, like nothing else on the planet, inhabited by old and individual communities not yet absorbed into modern China and the thrills and spills of a river adventure are all part of this experience. Each traveller comes back with distinctive stories and different highlights, but each of these three elements, the backdrop, the characters and the river’s own journey are reasons to take this trip on their own.

Boats can put in below spectacular Tiger Leaping Gorge, which is cleft into the land between the 18,000 ft tall, famously beautiful Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and Habba Snow Mountain as the Yangtze is entering into China. Daju is the closest village, set in amongst open, step terraces cut out by nature but now used by men as farming fields, it’s a very pastoral scene but behind the village rise snow peaked mountains.

At one point early on in your journey the sheer cliffs open up and looking back you’ll see the tremendous narrow cataract that is the gorge through which the whole Yangtzee tumbles over house sized boulders and drops 20 metres at a time, winding you with its beauty.

The river trails rather than winds through a series of tall gorges alternating with sandy beaches, towards the most dramatic rapids of the journey called Judgment Day (Class IV+: dangerous enough to be thrilling, but not out of the range of fit beginners lead by good guides as long as attempted when the river is lowest.). These are Grand Canyon style rapids between walls of white polished marble and red rock which start with just a few ripples and finish when the river opens out to beach banks again, perfect for campsites.

Naxi villages and communities of other ethnic groups can be seen peeking from the banks, some built out of stone, some of mud bricks and some of more modern bricks. There isn’t a lot of vegetation on the slopes, this is a very dry area, and the green trees look like popcorn from the river, but the land around each village is greener. These villages are remote, even from each other, about two days walk between each, and some have never had any contact with the wider world. But this is a trip of contrasts and you can go for miles without seeing a single road and then turn a bend and come upon a huge road and modern dam.

Baoshan village has had the most contact with the outside world, trekking groups have been stopping here since the early 1990’s, but the local lifestyle is still very traditional, rural and self sufficient. The villagers are generally VERY warm, one little old man acts as a one man welcoming committee, claiming to be from the Bureau of Tourism and takes everyone’s name and has his photo taken with each person. This is the best village in which to stay the night, they have the amenities for it, but mostly nights are spent camped on the beaches chatting around a campfire.

The river crossing at Yuan, about two thirds of the way into the eight days the trip takes, was where Kublai Khan crossed with 100,000 of his men - this is just one of the snippets of interesting history that took place along the Yangtze, in fact the river played a significant role in the unification of China.

After eight days following the river there is a get out point at Shudi.

One of the best things about taking a trip like this is the opportunity to meet both the local people and get to know the people you’re travelling with, who are, in a best case scenario, professionals with knowledge about the region you’re travelling through and in a worst case, people with similar interests to you engrossed in learning about the region.

Of the last group I took on this trip some paddlers had been on first descents of other rivers known for being spectacular, and more had been on the Grand Canyon, and all said the Yangtze was in the same class of do-before-you-die experience (I‘ve been saying that but it‘s nice to hear it from other people as well.). The obstacle is that the local government has plans to build dams along sections of this trip, meaning it, and the people who live along it, will become inaccessible. Unbelievably the local government doesn’t realise the paddlers nirvana they’re sitting on and apparently the historically significance of the Naxi communities and other sites they’re prepared to drown. That’s before considering how spectacular this countryside is. The Chinese government at a national level hasn’t approved the development but it looks like it is going ahead anyway. Now may be your last chance to go on this kind of adventure, or an opportunity to help draw attention to the dam building project on the global scene and force the local government to see the value in this resource for simply taking the breath away.

Best time to go is Spring when the river is at it’s lowest, between December and April.

Take this trip with Travis.

Written by  Travis Winn.

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