Tired of the big cities, we headed into the mountains of Shanxi province. Wutai Shan is one of four sacred Buddhist mountains in China - it's also the tallest in northern China, so of course we had to attempt to climb to the top. Wutai Shan ("shan" is mountain in chinese) is actually a set of five flat topped mountains with the north peak topping out at just over 3000m. Being the earthly home to the Buddhist Bodhisattva of wisdom, Manjusri, the place is littered with temples on every street corner and hilltop. I heard that there were 53 of them in the area (some more than 1200 years old), and it appeared that they had no intention of stopping there with at least a dozen new temples under construction.
The town itself was seriously devoid of any real character, with all the buildings looking like they were constructed from some kind of prefab kit that everyone bought at the local Chinese Home Depot. Each restaurant and hotel looked literally identical with a sign hanging above the door in the exact same font, color and size (maybe this was just standard early communist era accomodations). The only difference being the name of the restaurant, store or hotel in chinese. At first it was actually quite hard to figure out what was what since everything looked the same. But looking beyond the main strip of overpriced identical tourist restaurants and hotels, the stunning Buddhist temples more than made up for it. After spending more time in the place, I also began to realize that most of the people were there to worship at the various temples, and not just a gawking tourist like myself.
Being what seemed the only non-Chinese in town, it was actually quite hard for us to get a reasonable price for a taxi to our hotel, so after haggling for a while we just gave up and decided to walk the 6km. This turned out to be a bit more difficult then anticipated since we only had a vague idea of where it was and the phone number we had for the hostel was actually incorrect in both the guidebook and our booking reservation. To make things worse, the local taxi drivers were being difficult and not offering up any free guidance on where the hotel actually was or even if the hotel even EXISTED. After a quick call to the booking agency we found out that they ALSO weren't sure of the correct address or phone info for the hotel (although lots of times the address in China is not that helpful anyway...). In the end we got a lift from a local guy for a few dollars up the road where he incorrectly dropped us off at the wrong place, we then walked for a few more km for an hour through the countryside towards where we thought the hotel was until we eventually found another taxi who actually knew the hotel and offered to bring us there for a more reasonable (but still very expensive) price. In the end it took about two hours to get there but we saved $10! But this was more about the principle... and my desire to avoid getting ripped off once again. It might sound stressful, but for me it really is part of the fun - figuring out how things work and how much things should cost makes things much easier down the road. Turned out that the hostel actually did exist and was in a great quiet place in the countryside out of the city.
The first two days we spent touring around the various temples of the city, and got a real taste of Chinese Buddhist culture. On our first night there we met a local guy also staying at our hostel from Beijing, who was keen to show us around. As a practicing Buddhist he was able to shed a lot of light on what was actually going on in the temples. He introduced us to one of the monks at a temple where we compared leg flexibility (I lost), showed us how to properly burn incense, how to respectfully greet the monks in passing, and gave us the low-down on how to pray inside the Buddhist shrines. After the intense Buddhism primer, I felt a little bit less like a bumbling tourist awkwardly wandering aimlessly through these sacred sites (at least now I can maybe avoid doing something that would result in a lifetime of bad Karma... ).
On our last day, with a good weather forecast, we decided to try to climb up and over as many of the five sacred peaks of Wutai Shan as we could. The whole circuit is about 30-40km, but we figured we would just go as far as we could in one day. So this is where the really interesting part starts - hiking in China is not like in other places where there are maps, and easy routes to follow. The only intructions we got (from our hostel) was: "follow the road to the end past the farms, once you hit the temple walk along the outer wall until you get to the back, then climb up to the top of the mountain where there is another temple. From there follow some roads and/or paths that connect to the other peaks. To get back then just hike down from the mountain top (no trail) but just head for the city which you can see in the distance. From there you should be able to flag down a car to get back (probably)." Sounded easy enough - so we packed a lunch from what food we could recognize at one of the identa-kit stores and head off at 6am in the morning.
It was a great climb to the top of the first peak and was amazing to finally have some free space and be away from the crowds (we have begun to realize that it is very difficult to "get away from it all" in China and cherished every moment of the peace and quiet). The only people we crossed on the trails were a few Tibetans hiking to the different shrines and monestaries on each of the five peaks. The mountains are more rolling hills, than jagged peaks, but with the scattered temples dotting the ridge along the way it still felt like a magical place.
We ended up hiking with another Chinese couple from our hostel (since we were taking the same route that day), and it turned out to be quite fortunate since they could help communicate with the locals. We made a few wrong turns here and there but eventually made it to the north peak after hiking for about eight hours. At the monestary on the final summit, the monks even invited us for dinner (apparently you can eat at all the Buddhist monestaries for free, but the custom is to give a small amount of money in return). Here is where our next adventure began - the monks also informed us that it was too late to hike back into town (it was 6pm at this point and we were still on the 3100m summit) and all the cars had left for the day so there was no hope of a taxi. We had also run out of food at that point (it was very difficult to find good high-energy hiking snacks). In the end, we got some provisions from the monestary and decided to just hike back along the road even though it was another 4 hours down to the highway where we would have to flag down a bus to take us the last 25km back into town. Lucky for us my good Karma ended up paying off and after about 30 minutes of hiking down the road we ran into a taxi going in our direction in the middle of nowhere! Wow. After some haggling (and some quick thinking from our Chinese hiking companions) we got the ridiculous initital price of $100USD down to something more reasonable by claiming that we were NOT Americans and actually very poor students from South Africa (sounds ridiculous but it actually worked). That lowered the price back down to the local taxi rate....
Happy that we were finally on our way back, we soon realized that our adventure was not over. At the bottom of the mountain road we came down there was a gate and it was locked. This seemed to really surprise the driver as he (and us) were now stuck on the wrong side of the barrier and could not get back to the main road.
Eager to get his money, we walked the short way to the main highway where we flagged down a local car (everyone knows everyone in this small town) - and after some haggling, it seemed that the taxi driver had agreed to split the fair with this new guy and he was now going to take us back into town instead (not sure what happened to the original taxi driver in the end as his car was still stuck on the wrong side). So we hopped in the new car and headed into town. At this point it just started POURING rain with thunder and lightning - it just came out of nowhere. Glad we were off the mountain at that point and not walking down. Again - very good luck! Quite the adventure - but in the end we still made it home in time for dinner!
Sometimes some of the best experiences can't be bought on a tour - you just need to wait until they come to you. This day definitely fell into the latter category.
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