I decided to climb this holy Buddhist mountain after speaking to a lovely English hippy family I first met in Tiger Leaping Gorge and then again in Zhongdian. I was also buoyed up by the fact that I had completed the Gorge without any hardship and was well on my way to being a bona fide, invincible trekker or so I thought!
When I left Chengdu I'd met no-one who wanted to climb this mountain when I did but even though I was wary I was determined not to miss out. Luckily whilst looking around the Buddha at Lesham I met couple who planned to climb it too and joined them.
Whilst I was planning on taking three days to tackle this 3077m high mountain my friends wanted to do it in two days. The guide book advised against this citing jelly legs. Before coming here we'd heard so many stories about monkeys attacking people and their bags in the search for 'easy' food. In our hotel there were more horror stories written on the walls about the menacing monkeys. Given all this I chose safety in numbers over my legs.
We were given a map and spent a half an hour planning our route. Emei Shan in common with other holy mountains in China has a very long staircase to the summit and has lots of temples along the route. On this mountain there are two routes - a short one and a long one. The long one offers the most breathtaking scenery. Not being stupid we decided to take the short route up and the long one down! Regardless the short route meant a 2000m ascent from our chosen starting point and to think I was worrying where I was going to get my training in for the Moonwalk!
The following morning we were given a walking stick and a packed lunch by our hotel and we took a bus to Wannian from where we started our climb with the aim of reaching the summit or getting as close to it as possible before nightfall.
Emei Shan is covered in forest, the lower reaches were teaming with wildlife, it's the kind of place that you need David Belamy standing by your shoulder identifying every animal before it makes it's call! China's forestry service is good to amateur botanists and the like。 every now and again it identifies trees and plants by their Latin names and then explains about the flora and fauna using technical terms I would have been able to understand ten years ago but not now.
After a tiring three hour climb, we'd seen no monkeys but we were only a quarter of the way up. It was disheartening it wasn't as though we were dawdling. Whilst every downhill - of which there were very few - was greatly appreciated, the fact that we had dropped height and would need to make it up again somewhere was not lost on us. We met very few people on the way. Those that we did see were workers who were either fixing the staircase, making it safer or sweeping leaves off it. An hour later we reached a temple (Huayan Ding) and met some monks, though they didn't speak any English we showed them our map and asked them where we were. To our almost absolute relief - we'd managed to walk past one of the temples without noticing it and were actually at the half way point as opposed to the quarter point. I say almost as we couldn't be certain we had understood each other correctly.
After a further three hours spent in near tranquility we'd made it to Leidongping just short of Jieyin Hall, this place had a few hotels and restaurants, it was 5.30 pm and we decided to call it a day, not caring how long it would take to reach the summit from here. The next day waiting for my train to Chengdu I did the maths and worked out we'd climbed just over 16 miles.
We awoke early next morning, to my utter amazement my legs didn't hurt at all. However we collectively decided to take the cable car to the summit, the thought of making a further 500m ascent just did not appeal.
We walked uphill to the cable car but it was nothing compared with the day before, spent less than half an hour at the top and then started our descent at 9 am. Even though we were taking the long route down, given the distances on the map and the fact we were walking downhill we were confident we'd reach the bottom in four to five hours at most.
There were a lot more people on the mountain on this day than the one before, we figured it was because it was Saturday. Walking downhill was lovely, the upper reaches of the forest were much quieter than at the bottom. I heard a Woodpecker - I don't think I've heard a Woodpecker in real-life before. We were listening out for monkeys for a while before we realised we don't know what calling sounds monkeys made. A few times we heard rustles or movement in the forest and we walked in pack formation
We encountered our first monkeys at the Elephant Bathing Pool Temple. Some of the other trekkers had thrown food out for the monkeys and they were quite content eating it to bother with us. So we walked on by.
We were walking pretty quickly as we'd seen this scenery the night before, we spent a while looking for the alternative path down, it was not where our map said it was going. We hadn't seen it on the way up and we figured we must have missed it. When we'd totally given up it suddenly appeared and decided to take it. Almost immediately it became evident that we'd made a good choice the forest seemed superior to the one we'd seen before, it had a bigger variety the light seemed more complementary.
There were warning signs at certain stages along the walk advising us to stay close to our partners because of the monkeys and we took heed but still we saw no monkeys.
An hour later having walked past Yuxian Temple， we encountered lots of different groups of Chinese people going uphill telling us there were loads of monkeys. By this stage we'd heard so many warnings but seen no monkeys other than those at Elephant Pool, that we figured they were just trying to scare us.
Then finally we saw them. They were three of them playing up high in the trees. We were walking past a snack bar, one of the guys sensing our apprehension mimicked a monkey call, it seemed to be answered by lots of monkeys in the near distance. Some people have a dodgy sense of humour.
I picked up a stone for protection. David told us not to show our teeth as it was a sign of aggression. I told them not to be scared as they probably could sense it. We waited for a few moments to make certain the adrenalin had kicked in and then we walked on in a confident manner. Any monkey we saw we pointed out to the others so, we saw so many they were swinging in the trees around us, walking on the ground adjacent to the path and some were actually sitting on the very path we had to walk. There was no way we could avoid them.
The first time we had to walk past a monkey on the path was very scary. He sat in such a position that we had to cross him in single file. We stood some distance away from him for a while and sized him up then we walked on very close to each other with me at the helm, I looked at it, it looked at me and then I carried on and it didn't attack. After that it was breeze, monkeys were just begging if you ignored a monkey, it ignored you, result. They weren't aggressive, I don't know why I was so scared. Suddenly we could start appreciating them and took the opportunity to take some pictures, it was like we were on safari.
A little while later, a metre in front of me there was a male and female monkey sitting on the path. A teenage boy with his girlfriend were walking towards them and me when suddenly the monkey lunged for the boy's bag. The boy had fear in his eyes looked towards his girlfriend but kept a firm hold of the bag whilst the monkey was on it's legs and tried to wrestle it from him, when that didn't work the monkey tried to open the zip. Both the boy and monkey had a firm grip on the bag and neither was prepared to relinquish it.
Neither of the people had a stick or stone to defend themselves. I did as my book said and started to bang my walking stick on the ground and then started stamping my feet, suddenly the female got up on all fours from her sitting position, I saw that she was had a little baby holding onto her stomach and bared her teeth at me and that scared and stopped me for a few seconds. Suddenly a Chinese man appeared behind the boy, started waving his stick at the monkey and said a few words at which the monkeys ran off. I was so glad he turned up, they certainly weren't scared of me. We hastened our pace there after and stopped taking pictures.
We decided to stop for a quick snack resting at a snack bar, there were several other Chinese people around and we sat down to eat some sweets and then my Osnot took out a full packet of biscuits, a couple of seconds later a monkey came racing down the hand rail with it's teeth bared heading straight for us. We jumped up, shouted (read screamed) some and we all ran towards the protection of the shop. The shopkeeper came out and scared the monkey away for us, using a gesture indicative of lifting a large box above his head - why that worked, I have no idea.
When the shopkeeper's back was turned the monkey started coming for us again. We screamed and yelled some more, pointed towards the monkey and the man scared him away again. With the monkey gone, he smiled at us as though we were little kids silly for being scared of something so harmless, harmless my foot! With that, our hunger vanished and we walked on.
When we reached Magic Peak Monastery the monkeys were behind us, thank god but we were badly behind schedule, three hours had elapsed and we were only half way down. We had to get to down by 6 pm to get the last bus off the mountain and David and Osnot had a pre-booked train to catch. Fortunately we'd started early so we weren't overly worried. I found going uphill easier on the legs than going downhill as my knees started to take turns to ache, luckily I had the walking stick and was able to switch it from hand to hand as required.
Given our map, we expected to encounter our next marker (Venerable Trees Terrace) within an hour. An hour and a half later it was still nowhere to be seen so we quickened our pace though we were certain we hadn't slowed down significantly. We saw a sign that said 11 km Magic Peak Monastery and 4 km Venerable Trees Terrace, given our map, which had the two sights only 6km apart we reasoned we must have passed the Terrace without noticing. It couldn't possibly mean we had 4 km to the Terrace and thought nothing more of it. Sometime later we came to a snack bar, I showed the lady our map and asked where we were - yep, you've guessed it we'd just reached the terrace. We were at the 60% marker.
We picked up our pace and walked on, it was hard to maintain a fast pace as everyone was feeling a little weary. I'd had a disgusting breakfast, most of which I'd left, we did not stop for proper lunch and our snacks were nearly finished. We'd lost complete faith in our map and had no idea how much further we would have to walk. We knew we were in real danger of missing the last bus and none of us wanted to stay on this mountain another night.
We walked and walked, the scenery got better and better, you could hear water and sometimes you got to see streams and little waterfalls but we took no pictures and just kept walking. Eventually we saw more monkeys but these were nice - people were having their pictures taken with them and were being encouraged to feed them.
I know nothing about monkey society but being the cynic that I am, I'm hypothesising that the monkeys in the upper reaches started out like those in the lower reaches, perhaps we should not encourage dependence?
I can clearly remember that around about 4 pm we spoke to a non Chinese tourist, we correctly figured that she'd speak English and asked her how far the bus station was from where we were. She responded 20 mins and stressed that she was walking at a leisurely pace. Relief, finally we could relax a little and start enjoying the mountain again, my body took it as a signal to tell me all about the little niggles, aches and pains it was feeling, there were so many, it had obviously been keeping them from me before. I didn't mind twenty minutes was not long.
An hour later we were still walking we must be close now surely, everytime we saw a corner we figured the bus station must be just beyond it, alas no, this path just went on and on. There were hoards of tourists and people trying to sell things that forced us to walk slower. There were trees in glorious colour hanging up to 90 degrees of the mountain sometimes I was sure the river level was high and I was seeing a reflection but whenever I moved to the edge of the path I realised it was just trees and the river was much lower down. Finally at 5.30 we reached the bus station and bought our tickets. It was not a minute too soon, we'd been walking for eight hours.
Later on I calculated we walked 25 miles downhill almost 50% more than I expected to walk according to our map. That is what made it hard as we had no idea when it was going to end. Though it has to be said whilst I was doing it I had no regrets and loved being there for most of the way up AND down. OK so perhaps three days would have been better. If I come to China again, I want to do it again, the mountain was beautiful, my pictures do not do it justice. Though different from Tiger Leaping Gorge it was on a par with it. That is a bold claim I know and I admit it may be in part because I have never trekked in a forest before. Besides I want to go inside Wannian Temple next time rather than just walk by it. I could kick myself, I'd read about it but couldn't remember what the book said so decided to skip it - a huge mistake.
Gelan, Sean if you're reading this how did your trek compare? You definitely made the right choice, this was much better than Lesham.
In my picture gallery I've got a picture of four kids let me explain the story behind that. It was a 'life is beautiful' evening.
After completing the trek, I decided to go back to Chengdu rather than stay another night. Booked a ticket at Emei train station, my train wasn't due for another couple of hours so rather than wait indoors I decided to sit outdoors near to where the ladies were dancing and listen to the music while I worked out just how far I'd walked using my guide book rather than the map.
Pretty soon kids were coming up to me, saying 'hello' or a few numbers - never getting beyond 4 and then running away. Eventually two little girls came and sat beside me, a little while later they started fighting and I asked them to stop and soon realised they were fighting because it was the other girl's turn to sit next to me and the first girl was refusing to give up her seat. So I moved along the wall and allowed the other girl to sit on the other side of me. Then they started 'whaling', oh my ears, I can only assume they were mimicking speaking English to me. Eventually one of the girl's dad (I assume) came over and got them to stop.
Then parents started bringing their little toddlers up to look at me. I said hello and shook a few kids hands which encouraged a massive group of kids to surround me. Some of them could speak English so we had a conversation of sorts. It started raining so I took shelter in the waiting room of the train station and these four kids followed me in.
A woman, Pang sitting close by me could speak broken English so she acted as a translator and I whiled away my time speaking to these kids. When they started asking me about India I told them whilst I'm from India I live in England almost immediately the little boy wanted to have a look at my photographs. He looked at a few and then wanted to know where my football pictures were! He was very disappointed when I told him I had none. Then they wanted me to take a picture of them and after some difficulty I got the oldest girl's email address and promised to email her the picture. Eventually I sent them off home as it is way past their bedtime.
After they left, Pang and I got talking. She is a policewoman and couldn't believe I was travelling around China on my own and thought that I was crazy to come to China when I couldn't speak any Chinese. Anyway when the train arrived she took charge and 'looked after' me. We were sitting on the same carriage of the train, she was going to Xi'an (21 hours away) and me to Chengdu (2 hours away). I was looking forward to sitting down and relaxing. We got on the train and an old woman and baby were sitting on my seat. She said she'd act as my translator but it felt wrong to kick them off so I decided to stand.
A man was asleep at her seat so she stood with me, and we used the back translation pages of my guide book to hold a conversation. After a while she took me to her seat. Woke the man up and told him to get off the seat, then allowed me to sit down saying we'd take turns. After half an hour I made to get up but she said no. I asked her periodically if she wanted to sit down and she kept refusing, basically I stayed seated all the way to Chengdu. At Chengdu she escorted me off the train onto the platform and was really worried that I didn't have anyone waiting for me at there, this is a woman who's eight years younger than me.
We exchanged contact details but it was only afterwards that I realised she gave me a QQ no as opposed to an email address and I promised to contact her first. Gutted. To Pang thank you, loved your company.
