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I don't consider myself an experience traveller, I've seen some things around europe and even been to the highlands of scotland. But nothing has ever come close to what we've just been through.
Shan is the chinese word for mountain, so for those of you who haven't figured it out yet emei shan is a mountain. For the people of China Emei Shan is just not another large hill, but the holiest buddhist mountain. And why they have chosen this as their most sacred became quite obvious, but we'll return to that later on.
First we must begin with the beginning. It had been our plan all along to conquer a mountain, and from the desciptions we got from Emei shan the choice seemed natural.
(writers note: after a beautiful trainride from xian we arrived at chengdu, a metropolis close to emei shan). we took a bus to Emei, a small town at the base of the mountain, and checked in at a medium hotel. After a good nights sleep we started the climbing.
The starting point were at around 500 meters above sealevel, and Emei shan is 3099 meters. We had planned a tour in the area of 42
Billeder fra tog - Xi'an-Chengdu
En meget koennere udsigt end hvad den Transsibiriske kunne byde paa. km, so 2500 meters didn't seem so tough. And after having found the right way up it all seemed pretty easy. We walked on some rather light stairs surrounded by a beautiful area with high hills filled with trees and cliffs, and occasionally a small river running between the stones hundreds of meters below.
The temperature was too hot for us, so we had to drink liters of water and was still sweating like pigs to the amusement of the chinese who apparantly doesn't sweat or smell for that matter. Another thing the mountain is famous for is the hundreds of wild monkeys always on the lookout for tourists with food. In the early afternoon we encountered one of the Moneky jocking zones, but actually all the fun was held down pretty tightly by the securitypeople who didn't wanted us to get anywere near the monkeys. That was a bit of a kick in the balls (in lack of better expression), but none the less we ventured further up the mountainside, the one breathtaking landscape was replaced by the other, and most of the stops we made was for the sake of the camera. We arrived at Hongchunping at something
like 4 in the afternoon, a pretty small and insignificant temple, but just to get you the idea of where we were. After that we went mostly in the same hight until we went down to the bottom of the valley. This marked the end of the relaxing and easy part of the trip, cause from this point on it just went up. And up. And up. And when we finally got to the top of the one hill it just continued to the next hill and further up. At the end we were at the brink of falling on our knees and praying to god, even though one of us is atheist and the other is non-religious, but we pulled us self together, and found bated in sweat an with our legs trembling beneath us the Magic Peak Monastary. We tried afterwards to figure out the hight-difference. We walked in the area of 700 meters up endless stairs, and even though that might not seem so big a deal, you should try it yourself, and if you think it is a big deal, you should try it anyway, cause it feels great afterwards.
We slept in the monastary
in an overpriced room with TV (didn't seem too sacred), and next day we walked up the rest of the trip from around 8 in the morning. This part was quite tough, but compared to the day before, it was really relaxing. An incident with a monkey made it really exciting at one point. After having bought some bisquits at a stop, we went down a regular pathway, all of a sudden this giant monkey (it was big, trust me). I had unfortunately put the package in the side of my travelbag, and the monkey noticed. Before I knew what had happened it had jumped up on the travelbag, and I threw the bag on the ground and stepped away from it. The monkey of course took the bisquits and we had a nice little story to tell. We got to take some good pictures, and arrived at the top at 2 o'clock. From 2500 meters and up more and more clouds gathered around us and when we reached the top it was difficult to see for more than 10 meters. But the feeling was wonderful, and the whole mountain had been an experience out of the extraordinary.
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pani
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wooaaw
Jamen lille pus dog, så fandt du dine pandaer, godt gået. bare det var mig knus og krams og fortsat go tur