Trying to See Emei Shan and Trying to Find the Giant Budda in Leshan

---

---

Today we set off to Mount Emei (Emei Shan) 130km southwest of Chengdu. It didn’t start off too well (apart from the yummy BLT) we could not find the bus station, after an hour we finally found it!!!! So we boarded the bus, waited another 20 mins for it to fill up and then 2 hours later we were in Emei Shan. This place is one of the middle kingdom’s four famous Buddhist Mountains. Apparently the scenery is amazing here as well as the sunrise, we wouldn’t know though because all the time we were there it was misty!!!! On some rare occasions there is a phenomenon known as Buddha’s Aureole where rainbow rings produced by the refraction of water particles, attach themselves to a person’s shadow in a cloud bank below the summit. We didn’t see this either, apparently devout Buddhists, thinking this was a call from beyond used to jump off the cliff of Self-Sacrifice in ecstasy when they saw this!!!! What a silly thing to do!!!!

Emei Shan has little of its original temple work left, out of 100 there are now only about 20. You can do a 3 day trek to the summit (3099m) and back but we opted to be lazy and use the bus.

On our first afternoon after checking in to a hostel we think was called 3007 (for 80yn double shared bathroom, very nice rooms by the way) we walked to the Crouching Tiger Monastery and the Declare Nation Temple (Baoguo Temple),both called something else in the new LP and on the maps). Its sooo peaceful around this mountain and it was sooo good to get out into the country and breath some fresh air. It was very very humid though and after a 3 hour hike to these temples we were ready for a shower and a beer.

Dinner was alright, the problem in some places in China is your given an English menu so much smaller than the size of the menu the Chinese are given which in turn gives you very little choice.
We couldn’t help notice when eating our meal how quiet it was, for a massive local tourist place we expected to see loads more local tourists, we came to the conclusion that it was now out of season in China for their holidays, so many restaurants with hardly anyone in them and a bar with just us in there!!!! Such a shame.

The next day we checked out of our hostel, donned our day packs (we have lefts our big back packs back in Chengdu) and headed up the top where you can apparently stop up there and watch the sun rise.

We firstly stopped at the Long Life Monastery on the way to the top and purchased some bamboo walking sticks 1yn each, BARGIN!!!!

This hike to this monastery was immense in the humidity of the day, we must have climbed 1000s of steps. After a lot of cursing that we didn’t get the cable car up and far too much sweat on our backs we finally made it.

Again it was so quiet and peaceful up there, we wish we were rewarded with the wonderful views the guidebook kept telling us about but the mist was thick and strong, so just trees for us. After we had a walk around the monastery and recovered we walked back down (something that is always easier than walking up) and caught the bus up to the top. This was where T was very brave and got into a cable car, although is it being brave when you can’t see a thing because of mist?????!!!!

Up at the top is the Golden Summit Temple which again was beautiful. It was G’s turn to be photographed with the locals (Tony’s being in Xian). Not too sure why they wanted a photo though with all the sweat!!! After having a mooch around and generally not seeing the wonderful views because of the mist we decided that the sunrise wasn’t going to happen and since the rooms were at a price of 780yn per night in the hotel up there (that’s about 75 quid which is a rip off in our standards we have become accustomed too) we rushed down via the cable car to get the last bus back to the bottom.

We checked back into the hostel we were in before, probably confusing them and having them thinking we were mad to check out in the first place to take our bags up to the top. Back into the shower then back into the bar which we have probably kept in business for the winter and then a scoff on some nice duck and pancakes.

Ahhhh Leshan Leshan what can we say about our next day heading to Leshan to see the “world’s biggest budda”. With G thinking she’d already seen the "Worlds Biggest Budda" in Hong Kong, we headed by bus to Leshan, got off and got on a local bus, looking out for signs for the GIANT BUDDA, this didn’t happen and after getting off at the wrong stop (which we later discovered was the right stop) and walking for hours, we got back on another bus and got off at the same stop again thinking how on earth have we missed it when we kept seeing signs on the way back for it!!!! So we jumped into a pedi cab and got some old man, who looked like he was going to have a heart attack cycling two fat westerners up an up hill road, past where we’d got off the bus (twice) and the other way to where we walked for hours on end, to a pier where you could see across the river the Giant Budda!!!! Oh Great we thought what a waste of an afternoon. Not feeling the love of the Giant Budda anymore, we had a beer looking at it from afar, went to KFC and headed back to Chengdu to get our bags!!!! That’s all we saw of the "GIANT BUDDA" everyone told us we must go and see!!!! Good or bad thing “we don’t know” but the KFC was GOOD!!!!!

---