7 April 2013
Mountain full of temples
Today I went to the Qingcheng mountain, a place which claims to be the source of the taoist religion, whatever that is. I read the wikipedia article and I still dont know, whatever it is theres still buddahs everywhere.
Getting to the mountain turned out to be easy. The train takes barely 50 minutes, even though it stops a few times. The high speed rail line was built as a gift to the region to help them recover from the earthquake. The actual city by the mountain was one of the worst affected areas, where various schools collapsed. These schools are now shrines but apparently off limits to foreign visitors.
From the train window it was apparent that what has been built is of a higher quality than most of China, as the story goes, all survivors left homeless, and we are talking hundreds of thousands of people, were re housed in a permanent new house, with new shops and schools etc. within a year.
Anyway, once you get off at the station, you have to catch a local bus to the foot of the mountain. Just follow the crowd and be prepared to be stuffed into a bus like never before!
I took a lot of photos, even though I edited most out, so I wont crap on too much here.
I awoke early, to observe the dawn. Not as clear as yesterday.
Out the front of the Chengdu North station. Which is also called the Chengdu station or Chengdu old station just to confuse tourists.
Note all the army guys waiting to board trains, being sent back on duty after the tomb sweeping festival. Lots of trains left from this station to places unknown. They even have external herding yards where people with bags of crap are kept for a few hours before they are allowed inside!
I presume thats my mountain. And now I know for sure the smog is the fault of farmers. The last bit of the journey was past many nice looking farms, and all were burning small fires of green stuff that lets off a lot of smoke.
The bus situation was ridiculous. Its great to be taller than average so you can get some air.
Even before you get to the official park entrance (which costs about $10!), the temples and whatever starts.
This is the main gate to the park. It is a bit weird to pay, but that seems to be the case at all religious sites I have visited across China. To put this into perspective, the 50 minute bullet train ride cost $2, park entry cost $10.
You can pay money to have 2 guys haul your ass up to the cable car, all of about 200 metres.
Someones decided to invest in a boat. Look how far it takes you. It took all of 2 minutes to walk around this lake.
Zoomed in, cropped, I think this is my destination.
Now I was at the cable car station. Little did I know I had already taken a wrong turn if I want to walk to the top.
There were signs and maps, but they were infuriating. Each map showed just a small part of the trail, orientated differently every time, and never to any kind of scale. Signage to the cable car and boat was very clear though!
They really want you to take the cable car, I want to walk, this was the only path near the cable car station.....
What looked OK from the bottom turned out to be a muddy service track to the poles that hold the cable cars up. I was not supposed to be here! None the less, I pushed on, never saw another person!
Eventually I rejoined the main path, to be greeted by this sign about a wild panda that took an adventure tour down town.
Once back on the main path, the temples started. I think theres at least 10 temples on the mountain.
More temple.
Temples burning stuff. A useful feature, they all have decent toilets, and drinks for sale, at about 200% normal price but that means $1 instead of 50 cents for a 600ml ice tea or coke zero.
I made it to the first of two peaks in really good time. Stopped to take some photos and eat my dried banana chip things.
This is looking over the back of the mountains. Pands live that way.
More view. Looking back from where I had come.
And before I knew it, I was at the top. In about 1.5 hours. For those from Adelaide, its not much more difficult than Mount Lofty to walk the entire way. If you go the crazy way I did!
This has all been rebuilt after the earthquake. It seems to have been funded by the people of Macau.
Some more view. This is actually the foot of the himalayas. If you go further west you are in Tibet.
Last view shot for now.
Its me at the top, wearing my big shorts. Big shorts are useful so you can carry snacks, your passport (required when you take high speed trains), maps, etc.
Me again. People looked at me like I was crazy.
Since I finished the climb much quicker than I estimated, I decided to walk a big loop around back to the start. This involved descending a stair case that was treacherous.
Its the steepest I have ever negotiated, and the steps are too short even for my regular (non giant) sized feet. I had to walk down like a penguin.
An interesting part of the walk around the tops of the mountains.
No, I didnt walk up here.
There were lots of interesting cliffs. All had been given names and a back story that didnt make much sense. This was pencil throwing gorge or some such thing.
And finally, I was back to more temples, which appeared on the maps and I was able to negotiate my way back to the bus! A great day trip from Chengdu.
At first I was physically disappointed the climb was too short, but by extending it with the big loop around the top, my legs were suitably shaking when I finally got back on the bus.