Video: Ping Pong Ka-Pow, Episode 14

AND SO: after traveling through the golden beaches of Thailand, the radiant fields of Laos and the alluring jungles of Cambodia, it is in China, where we least expect it, that we find the most beautiful and awe-inspiring place of all.

Tiger Leaping Gorge.

I have to imagine that we were lucky. In the warmer months I guess that there are tourists aplenty, that the teahouses fill up and the track buzzes with the clicks of cameras and iPhones, the squishes of Birkenstocks into mud, the endless myriad noises of Western accoutrements.

But for us, arriving completely by chance in the middle of winter, there was only the mountains, silent and incredible, and a track leading through them, and the occasional man leading his donkey down the path, laden with firewood. And a couple of Swiss tourists as well, okay, but they were the only ones and we were happy for the company, swigging foul (but cheap!) Chinese liquor by the bottle on the balcony of one of the teahouses.

There is no sharper image in my mind, eighteen months later, than of those mountains, stark and clear in the quickly cooling afternoon sun. We reminisce over the couple of days spent here more than we do about any of the places we passed through.

From what I wrote at the time:

So we pushed on north to Tiger Leaping Gorge, where, surrounded by snow-capped peaks of 20,000ft or more, we trekked for two days along the ridge above the gorge. It was spectacular; we were covered in dust and our feet ached from the long climb but reaching the peak of the ridge and staring out into a 16km long gorge framed by those mountains was indescribably beautiful. China gets more and more beautiful at every turn; usually there are enough annoying aspects to match the good things but not here: alone on the track apart from the occasional goat-herder or trader carrying his goods by pony (plus a couple of Swiss backpackers with whom we had a drunken, stumbling night of draining bottles of cheap Chinese liquor), we felt the kind of peace that we had assumed China was incapable of giving.

The music in the clip is a varied bunch – we’ve got the dance-pop of the Teenagers’ “No Love” (as remixed by Delorean), the beautiful, perverted folk of Palace Music’s “Mountain Choir” and the noise-pop classic “California Goths” by Wavves.

L.