Back to nature

We have spent an awesome couple of days in and around Chengdu that included Jens‘ personal Chinese highlight and afterwards what probably comes close to being my own one.

After we got to Chengdu on our nightmare bus ride we just chilled out for a day. We only made it up from the bars couches to get to a restaurant that people had recommended to us for its great sweet dumplings. The food was worth get going – but only for me. It all included peanuts, and since Jens is allergic, he didn’t really enjoy. So he got to decide where to go for dinner – his fine choice lead us to a great Swedish restaurant where we had their most famous dish, Köttbullar meatballs… yes, you guessed correctly, we went to Ikea. Chengdu has more western brand shops than any other city we have been to so far, and their shopping mile that we checked out another day is huge. H&M, C&A and S.Oliver line up with KFC, McDonalds and Starbucks where the Chinese ladies that just shopped till they dropped next door at Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Prada have their Café Latte. A great place to hang out and watch the Chinese go mad consuming way more than they could ever need. 

 The next day was time for what Jens had been waiting for for so long: the Giant Banda Breeding Research Base. We went there early in the morning and Jens got all excited. We saw tons and tons of Pandas right when they woke up and were most active. They munched away on their bamboo while lying around there, they climbed up trees, the smaller ones played with each other or cuddled with their moms – just soo cute! We got to see three newborns, the youngest of which was not even 2 weeks old and still without any fur and eyes closed. 

Another one, still a kid but a couple of years old, was the fattest of the whole gang, so we were quite impressed when he started climbing up the thinnest branch of the highest tree around. Shockingly- but not really surprisingly- the branch broke and the little fat Panda fell a couple of meters deep on the ground – hopefully he didn’t get hurt. There are tons of other cute little stories to tell and Jens will be willing to share them all when being asked - and when not being asked. It was great to see these endangered animals in such big numbers and so close to their natural habitat and we had a great time visiting them. 

Grand Buddha, us and Mr. X

Then we left Chengdu and went to Emei Shan, another of the five holy Chinese Buddhist mountains. On our way there we passed by Leshan and got off to take a boat tour to see the biggest Buddha statue in the whole world – the Grand Buddha. It is carved into a cliff where two rivers meet and his ears alone are 7 meters long. It is quite impressive, but our boat tour was not, so the whole undertaking didn’t touch me as much as I would have thought it to. Still, we get to say that we saw it :)

In Emei Shan we stayed one night and then left the hostel in the little village Baoguo at the foot of the mountains very early the next morning and got started on our hike up to the Golden Summit, one of my highlights. On our way we got attacked by snakes, monkeys and, worst of all of course, tons of insects that I mostly have never seen before in my life. 

Beautiful scenery awaited on Mount Emei

We walked through old evergreen forests, climbed up an enormous amount of stairs (actually it was less a hike than a climb of stairs…), passed beautiful waterfalls and rivers, didn’t hear any cars for the first time in a month, met only very few people and could barely see the steps ahead of us when we got into the cloud zone. We stayed at a monastery on the mountain for the night where it was cold and damp but they had showers and, yeah, electric blankets that saved the night. We went to bed after dinner at six ‘cause there was nothing else to do and got up early to be back on our way with the rising sun shortly after 6. 

Reached the Golden Summit!

We made it to the peak around 10 am where it was freezing cold, the clouds made it impossible to see all the beautiful monasteries and scenery and it was far from quite and peaceful because a cable car lead up to the peak directly and the usual enormous amount of Chinese tourists made good use of that – but still we were the happiest people and so proud to have made it! Only a little more than 30 km but 2500 meters difference in altitude, all in steep stairs that first lead up and then down just to lead up again…we were pretty happy to be at the top. 

Now we are back in Chengdu where we realized that we have one day more in China than expected, which is very welcome since our legs are still a bit shaky and our clothes could sure use a bath as much as we did after the hike. It leaves us some time to say goodbye to China and get ready for Thailand.