Hiking Li River (漓江)

Date: 2018-11-19

Attention: The old hiking route from Yang di to Xingping is closed or at least not supported any more. You cannot do the first section of this path because there are no ferries going through the River from Yang di to the Langshi side of the River and there is no ferry from the Langshi side to Quanjia Zhou.

But I did the second part of the hiking path which was really amazing.

First for a “yinguo ren” like me – even though I am actually an “aodili ren” – who is not speaking Chinese it is not quite hard to find a way from Guilin to Yang di pier. On every corner around the Guilin train station there are people who are selling trips to Yangshou and so I spoke to an old lady there to get a bus to Yang di. So she showed me a way through several streets to a booth of a small travel company, there I bought a ticket (40¥) to “Yang di lu”. This is the crossing of the main highway with the small street to Yang di. There I waited a little bit for a bus to Yang di pier which is about 11 kilometres away from the crossing. It costed 10 ¥.

Well on Yang di pier I could confirm that the route is not open anymore. So I nearly got comfortable with the idea to go by “bamboo” boat, which is actually a boat made of plastic tubes, down the river.

But then I met a men who said he is driving me by car to Quanjia Zhou, so that I can hike the path from there. First he wanted to have 150 ¥, but after a little bargaining I paid 120 ¥. So we headed to Quanjia Zhou. Actually the trip was really cool in some king of sightseeing car and he stopped and showed me the best viewing points on the way – so it was really worth the money.

After this trip I was really looking forward to hike the path. I found out that the path is not maintained any more, but most times it is only putting some plants aside and stairs are already broken, but no real serious climbing is needed.

And the views there are amazing like small waterfalls amazing views on Li River with the limestone mountains. And the rotten path with the rotten buildings which formerly may be restraunts make the way really special.

After about two and a half hours I came to the village called Lengshui, because there are still people living the ferry there to the other side where Xingping is, is still operating. I paid the 30¥ so they shipped me to the other side.

There I expected a path near the river which is very crowded, because at the ferry station there were lots of tourists, but no one except me was going this way. So there were some obstacles like broken bamboo trees, but again nothing serious.