The Holy Mountain of Emei

No tranquility in the Wannian Temple on Mount Emei

(Zur deutsche Version hier entlang.)

We get up early to go on the Holy Mountain of Emeishan in the province of Sichuan in China. We want to visit the Buddhist Temple of Wanniansi. It is a monks cloister.

We exit our bus at the valley station of the aerial passenger line. Here we get  the preordered tickets. From here regional busses transport all passengers for the  aerial line to the station. About 20 minutes does the bus need to get there. We go along a picturesque river and the rain forest.

The next ticket office is waiting, now we have to pay for the aerial line. Many other people like us are waiting for the little cubicles. I assume that it won´t be very  quiet at the cloister, if all these loud people are going up as well.

The aerial passenger line was built in Austria. It´s a short ride up the hill and we descend our cubicles near the top of the mountain.

A very well maintained foot path with some easy steps brings us near to the entrance of the cloister. After climbing a lot of steep stairs another entrance fee is due for payment.

It´s far from meditative quiet tranquility. Just the opposite. Many Chinese tourist groups get instructions and explanations with a micro. I get a headache. It´s still early morning but the sun is already shining very hot. I´m so happy that I took along my sun hat!

The temple aera is composed of halls, the oldest one is over 600 years old. The 62 tons elephant statue with the Buddha couldn´t be destroyed in the Cultural Revolution and is still standing here and a well known site for contemplation and prayer. (Here you might see a short video about the temple.)

We have to get back to our hotel, so we head along the pilgrimage foot path, down the hill. People who chose to walk uphill to the temple look very tired. It´s a long way up with lots of steps , but an nice walk down. We walk under the shade of big old trees. Our guide asked us not bring along anything to eat or drink, because here living monkeys try to steal everything eatable. We didn´t see any, maybe we were too late or they already had their share.

Halfway down we take a little break to sip some refreshing jasmine tea.

All in all we need about 90 minutes to come back to the downhill station of the aerial passenger line.

The public busses are already waiting to bring us back to the foot of the hill.

At the Sunrise Emeishan hotel we take a nice shower, take our things and soon we are back on the road. It´s about 140 km back to Chengdu, where we have to get our next plane to Lijiang.

Do we catch it? I can´t tell right now. I´m writing this blog post on the bus. And the bus stands in a traffic jam, for more than 2 hours now. The highway is closed due to a high-ranking politician, who needs to be alone on the highway.

Okay, let´s see if we get on the plane in time…

See you next week on my blog, or meanwhile on my facebook site!