Advertisement
Published: August 26th 2010
Edit Blog Post
A day trip from Chengdu...
On a misty morning, we left our Chengdu hostel and got a local bus to the "tourist distribution centre" (the literal translation of the long distance bus station!). We took a two hour bus trip south to a place called Leshan, famous for being home to the largest outdoor Buddha in the world, and another UNESCO site.
Upon arrival at Leshan, we took one more bus to the Buddha park/National park area, located across the river. As we entered the park, there was a 170m long stone buddha carved into the rock face, but I reckon it was a cheat because I could only see his head and his feet and the rest of him was conveniently overgrown and covered in trees! The Buddha park was mainly filled with replicas of famous statues of Buddha from around the world, so we chose to move on to the giant Leshan Buddha. Walking through the trees in the national park area was very nice (some people wear the most inappropriate shoes to go to a national park though!!)
We ascended towards the top of the giant Buddha which is said to have been built with
the intentions of calming down the waters of the raging river which it faces, where many lost their lives. It was all one monk's dream to create this giant Buddha, carved out of the red sandstone cliff, but when the carving got down to the shoulders, the monk died so he never got to see the finished Buddha. Monks have been living at this site for over a thousand years. The building of the Buddha resulted in so many rocks being deposited in the river that it did indeed calm down the flow.
On the way to the top there were some nice temple areas and pavillions but the main attraction is the Buddha himself, and at the top you can stand level with his head at 71 meters high. You can't see his hands or feet from the top.
To see Buddha in his full glory, unfortunately you have to join the masses and queue for the staircase that descends alongside him. The queue took us good one an a half hours, and I expect it would be more on national or religious holidays. We were two of very few foreign tourists there. The queue was mostly
made up of colour coded number bearing badge wearers, belonging to Chinese tour groups! At one point in the day we were stood outside the cave where the monk in charge of Buddha construction lived for a while, and there were three microphone wielding tour guides all talking (loudly) at the same time, argh!! Everywhere in the national park was peaceful, except for where the Buddha was.
Slowly we made it to the staircase, whilst holding back the cheeky ones in line trying to push in, and we joined the parade of cameras as we descended the stairs alongside Buddha so we could view him in all his glory. We were herded into a narrow staircase, and walked down to the river level where we strained our necks to look up the 71 meters of Buddha in front of us - even his big toe was bigger than me! His middle finger is bigger than a three storey building. Not only was his size impressive, his age was too - carving began in 713 AD. The climb back up to the top on the other side was much quicker!!
I have to add in the classic piece of
Chinglish that was on the information board. There is a lot of Chinglish (bad English) around in China, which can be quite amusing, but this one is especially good and worth a mention..."you would be drunk by the beauty of nature". If you don't believe me, there's a photo below to prove it!
Sadly the Buddha is under threat from rain, wind, pollution, river currents and the modern world in general...so visit now!
We ended the day by walking back through the park and we visiting the cave tombs and climbing up a long way to the Wu Yu temple. We walked back through the national park and past another big Buddha and a very steep staircase, and back to the bus for our return to Chengdu.
J x
Advertisement
Tot: 0.122s; Tpl: 0.024s; cc: 12; qc: 31; dbt: 0.0721s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb