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Wutai Shan, one of China’s sacred Buddhist mountain ranges.

The range is dedicated to the Manjusri Buddha, the Buddha of wisdom. After a fairly uneventful but beautiful journey (other than the driver overtaking on blind mountain road bends at high speed!), we paid the steep entrance fee to the area, much more expensive than our Rough Guide said it was! Nevertheless the scenery was stunning and we were excited about visiting all the temples and perhaps seeing some monks going about their daily business.

On arrival, we were met by numerous hotel touts and picked one at random, which turned out to be ok. Basic, but clean and right in the centre of everything. We immediately went exploring even though the heavens had opened (it rained for the whole 3 days we were there!) however it gave us a chance to test our waterproof jackets and enjoy the cooler temperature. We visited a couple of the closest temples, which were absolutely amazing - bright colours, the smell of incense, monks chanting, wonderful Ming and Qing dynasty architecture - the whole atmosphere was serene and made us feel oddly at peace. This area is so remote that it remained largely untouched during the Cultural Revolution and has retained all its original buildings.

After an early night (strangely enough no nightlife in the holy mountains!) we awoke to more rain and the landlord asking us to change rooms so he could fix the leaking roof in our bathroom! We visited a couple more of the fifty temples in the area and were just beginning to look for somewhere to have lunch when a smiling monk said hello to us (as many of the other monks and Chinese tourists had done) and struck up a conversation. His English was great and he took us to a restaurant, ordered some local delicacies for us and, although he didn’t eat with us, stayed chatting while we tucked in. Hai Fan, it turns out, is an 8th generation living Buddha having “died” (reached enlightenment) in 1983 and is now a dharma master at the Yuan Zhao temple with many pupils all over the world!! We were pretty excited about this and asked him lots of questions about Buddhism and he gave us lots of answers about the Chinese government!! He then invited us up to the temple, where he took us to his modest private quarters and served us with some watermelon and made an offering to his master of chilli sausages (odd, we know!) which he had just bought at the local shop. Apparently not all Buddhists are vegetarian and in fact you can even make offerings of beer too!

To our surprise he offered to give us a blessing and a teaching, as well as giving us each a bead bracelet and pictures of his master who is in exile with the Dalai Lama, so that we might set up a shrine when we get home! We spent a couple of hours in his company, chatting whilst he chanted his own mantras in between lines of conversation (quite a skilled multi-tasker!). It was a truly awesome experience - there’s just no other way to describe it.

We then headed up to some of the higher (in altitude) temples, climbing several hundred steps and passing numerous pilgrims along the way. Thankfully the clouds had lifted at little by that time and we managed to get some decent views across the valley amd to the mountains beyond. A truly uplifting place, both spiritually and visually. Somewhere that will be forever close to our hearts.

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