Back from the mountains

My legs are screaming in pain!!!! Haha ... I underestimated the mountain. Thought I'd never do mountains again after the Kinabalu which gave me black toes and jelly legs for days (and that was 6 years ago) but I had chosen to attempt Emei. Ooooh ... on the map it looked great - the trails were well-planned out, there're guesthouses I could stay in along the way if I get exhausted and at 3,700-plus metres, it must be an easier one than the K. Wrong!

The slopes of Emei are very steep. While it does have proper stairs to climb (we had to climb stones most of the way on the K), it's tougher than the K going against gravity in a 60-70-degree kinda slope. Plus the rain. Scary!! Apparently, not many people attempted the trek. So for me, it's a far lonelier climb compared to the K ... and there're no persons or guesthouses for miles!!

In the end, I managed only one trail when there're at least 3. After only 6 hours of hiking, my legs could not take it anymore. I stayed the night at a family-run guesthouse at Wanniansi. The nice owner even took me to the temple and showed me the proper way of offering prayers to the Buddha the next day. Then, I took the bus up to the Golden Summit. Thankfully, the weather's good compared to the day before. Not exactly sunny but I got a pretty amazing view of mountains that stretch far into the distance. Awesome!

That wrapped up my Emei trip and I headed back to Chengdu on a 5.30 pm bus which departed at 5.15 pm when it was full. It'd be a 2-hour ride and I thought we'd be early but alas, we're caught in a jam just shortly before the expressway tollgate for an hour. In the end, we got back to Chengdu at almost 9pm and I was almost starving! I only had a local breakfast of noddles (which looked and tasted somewhat like dumplings) with some rice and an egg cooked in a sour liquid called the "laozao", which is a type of fermented rice wine. Tasted strange but not awful, though second helpings would be an overkill.

So here I am today taking it easy on my legs and basking in the sun in the garden at Sim's. Maybe I'll head out to the square later and spend the afternoon with the Mao statue and at some of the good makan places there ... like the Chen Mapo Tofu!

Posting pictures on Facebook ... check em out :)