Niru Seven Colour Waterfall

Niru village is a three-hour drive from Shangri-La, and nearly all of it is mountain road. I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s a bit of a lost corner. I’d say don’t try it unless you’re confident behind the wheel. On the way in I saw two cars already down in the ditch, getting towed out. The rainy season isn’t a good time either, a lot of the road has rockfall. It was a long way to go for a waterfall, and I’d read about it in a museum first. I’d gone into one in Yunnan to learn about the Three Parallel Rivers world heritage area, saw a photo of this waterfall, and couldn’t stop thinking about it. So the drive in, and the six kilometres on foot, felt earned. Entry is free, but you have to register for fire safety at the start, and for the hike too, so that someone knows if you go missing. We did the round trip from the village, around ten kilometres. I took it slowly and stopped for photos and still finished in about three hours, though plenty of people say four to five. Some of the boardwalk has taken a battering and a few sections are broken, so you step carefully. The path follows the river most of the way, and in places the boardwalk is built right over fast white water. If you don’t like rushing water, the walk out is nerve-wracking. I felt my stomach drop a few times looking down at it. Everything is covered in moss. Rocks, trunks, banks, all of it. If you like green, you’ll struggle to look away. It’s cool in the canyon too, and the path itself is easy going. Partway along there’s a seven-tier waterfall, which I didn’t expect and which is rare enough to be worth stopping for. And then you reach the main one. I tried a lot of angles and my camera couldn’t do it. It’s a wide tufa terrace, dozens of separate streams fanning out across the cliff and falling down it like loose silk, with big old trees all around and mist rising off the water. Little streams run out of the moss like something from a fairy tale. If you can be there between about ten and two, the sun comes in low and you often get rainbows. The locals call it the divine waterfall and I understood why. I’d imagined Jiuzhaigou’s waterfalls before I came, but this is bigger, even with the water level lowish when I went. And it was still stunning. At the far end there’s a wooden bridge too. I’d keep an eye on the time, because I was told they stop letting people in after half past two in the afternoon. You can also start from the other end, Shudu Lake in Pudacuo, but that’s more than twenty kilometres and takes a full day. The upside is you never walk the same stretch twice. I took very little with me. Leave your bag at the guesthouse. I didn’t use trekking poles. Two bottles of water, quick-dry trousers and top, a hat and sunglasses for the sun. I wore my hiking shoes and they felt too heavy, so something lighter and breathable would have been better.