Emei Mountain - Elephants and Bodhisattvas abound on Ermei Shan.

#falladventures #travel #familytravel Another place to be pushed and shoved by the devout gawkers. The journey to the top is by a massive cable car that they say takes 100 people and provides yet another opportunity to be pushed and shoved, then there is a long, long, long walk with vicious monkeys and endless food hawkers. It's all mainly new, but it's impressive. The giant staircase leading to the mega statue is impressive, and the inner room of the main temple is wondrous with myriads of golden buddhas and decorations. (no photos) Even in the fog, the place is very atmospheric. If you're thinking of going up there, it's worth it, though it's a Sacred Buddhist Mountain no more. As someone who’s from the equator and most of the time living on low altitude, this was quite a challenge. Wanted to just go beyond the usual Panda tour and by chance learned about Emei Mountain (which I’ve heard so much from various Chinese old school martial arts tv series), so it was an immediate draw to ir despite we only had 2 days 1 night to spare. First day arrived at 6 at TFU. Took a taxi to the Holiday Inn Emei (the one at the foot of the hill) to stay very the night. Last bus to the midpoint of Emei Mountain ends about 3pm I was told. Next morning, packed up our backpack but left main luggage at the hotel Conceirge. The bus station was just 8 mins walk from Holiday inn hotel. Took the bus ride to mid point (雷洞坪). There, one has to walk up the stairs for about 1.2km (which was tiring for an old man like me 😅). Then, there was an option to walk all the way up (which is 6km and I was told would take 4 hours). I took a few more steps and then decided (thanks to my wife) I might not be able to complete it. So we took the cable car that was available to go up (so worth it!). We book the hotel (Jin ding Xin Xin) because it was about 10 mins walk to the peak peak… where the large Buddha statue (and temple) was. We were able to see the sunset from our room so that’s a plus. It gave us enough time to chill around and then stayed over to catch sun rise (like 5am+). Then by noon, we came down the same way we went up (but in reverse order) to pick up our luggage to catch a taxi to the train station in West Chengdu for a 37 hours train ride to Lhasa, Tibet. It was worth it. Both my wife and me enjoyed it. Like the pictures if you enjoy them! Follow me, Travelogist, for more updates like these.