Visit to " E Mei San " and " Le Shan "

And so, after a very surprisingly comfortable 5 star suite hotel , first night at Oakwood Residence in the Wohou area in Chengdu, we had to wake up early the next morning (very reluctantly) and start our bus journey (2hrs from city but took us 1 hr to get out of the city- traffic bad ..nowadays China is not just bicycles but lots and lots of 4 wheelers ) to the Mountains. The famous Mt. E Mei and Le Shan.

Mount Emei , at 3,099meters is the highest of the Four Sacred Buddhist Mountains of China. It was made a UNESCO World Heritage site is 1996. It is regarded as the " bodhimanda", or place of enlightenment.
The 16th and 17th Century sources allude to the practice of martial arts in the monasteries of Mt Emei made the earliest extant reference to the Shaolin Monastery.
This is the location of the first Buddhist temple built in China in the 1st Century. The site has 76 Buddhist monasteries of the Ming and Qing period, most of them located near the mountain top.

No wonder we were "freezing cold" as the summit of this Mount Emei has an alpine subarctic climate with long cold winters and short cool summers. The daily average temp ranges from - 6C in January to 11C and annual mean of 3C.

Visitors to Mt Emei will see lots of Tibetan Macaques who can often be viewed taking food from tourists..

dont fight with them, they mean business

the hundreds of steps are easy if they are not icy slippery !!

I go up and up and up...

taking a break, but a sec after this photoshoot, the giant Macaque was running just behind my ears !

" icicles "

nearly there !!

doing the " side step dance ", its so slippery due to ice

Sedan chair for the lazy ones..

a long walk

its 2500masl and coming down the hill is worse than going up ! So we decided to take the longer route ie via the road even though it is still iced and snow, it is safer than the slippery steps !

at last ...reached the bus stop, time for a photoshot.

playing with ice !

the rest of the hash people have gone down the steps to the bus, but a few of us, obviously the smart ones, took the easier way down ie the normal road with less ice, not so taxing on our knees!
and of course, we had to stop many times for breathtaking photo shoots !

monkeying around in E Mei Shan

LE SHAN

After half hr of discussion and voting, the Hash members voted to go on the boat (about rm70) to view the Buddha from the river instead of hiking or walking one hour to the stone sculpture.. this shows how truly "hashers" we are !! 
Walking costs rm180
Boat costs rm70

the boat

so we board the boat ....

spectacular view from the boat

 The Leshan Gian Buddha is a statue of Maitreya , a Bodhisattva usually represented as a very stout monk with a broad smile on his face and his naked chest and paunch exposed to view in sitting position. The Buddha is located to the East of Leshan City, Sichuan Province at the confluence of 3 rivers namely, Min River, Qingyl River and Dadu River. In 1996 the location of the Buddha was included by UNESCO on the list of World Heritage sites.The statue took people more than 90 years to carve and is the biggest carved stone Buddha in the world. Facing the river it is 71 meters high and has 8.3meter long fingers. The charm of the Buddha is not in its size but also in its architectural artistry.There are 1,021 buns in Buddha's coiled hair. Another architectural highlight is the drainage system, made of hidden gutters and channels scattered on the head and arms, behind the ears etc. The system helps displace rainwater and helps keep protect the stone Buddha.


And after returning on boat to land, some "smart guys" wanted to hike! And expect the rest of the group to wait while they hike ie one hour.
a bit of "grumbling, commotion, unsatisfied..."  energy here... 

anyway, while waiting for some of the Hash members to hike the giant Buddha, some of us took a ride in the tricycle and some strolled along the pathway and discovered some fantastic tasty roast duck !

well, food always calm the nerves ....