About two weeks ago, the other teachers and I decided to venture out together to explore Sichuan Province one last time before we all scattered to the winds for the Spring Festival Holiday. The location we chose, with advice from some of our Chinese friends, was Emei Mountain, one of the four holy Buddhist mountains in China. The mountain is full of monasteries, with a famous pilgrimage site at the peak. There were buses that ran from the base of the mountain to the top, but we had been told that the more 'authentic' way to experience the mountain was to make a two day hike to the top, stopping at a monastery to sleep on the way. It sounded like a great plan at the time, and after all is said and done, I'm very grateful that we did the trip. It was full of awe-inspiring landscapes, and was easy to see why it is considered to be a holy site. But it was as stunning as it was grueling and mentally exhausting. Every person we talked to about visiting the mountain warned us that it was 'very difficult'. Being in pretty good physical shape and an active hiker back in America, I took this with a grain of salt...but it was safe to say that every single one of us underestimated the task we were undertaking.
Still blissfully unaware of our impending saga, we set out on Friday afternoon after Cathy (one of our students) had finished with her exams and Bruce (another Chinese friend) got off work. After a short train ride and a night in a hotel at the base of the mountain, we made our way to the trail head the next morning, bright eyed and rosy cheeked:
The start to the trail was so typically Chinese. It was currently under construction, but that was no barrier. We made our way to the main trail by crossing through a rickety tunnel supported only by bamboo and trembling wooden boards. The first part of the hike was very enjoyable. We steadily made our way up a gently sloping trail, stopping to admire the plethora of crumbling stone carvings that blended into the rock walls, admiring the breath-taking scenery, and taking pictures of the pagodas and bridges that littered the trail.
But all good things come to an end. They say that trouble comes in threes, and so it was for us. The first of these troubles came about two hours into our hike: the monkeys.
To preface this part of the tale, I should tell you that one of the main reasons we had chosen Emei Mountain as our destination was that it is home to the Tibetan Macaques. I had never seen monkeys in the wild before, so I was hoping to glimpse them swinging among the branches or sitting high in the treetops. I should also mention that I had been warned that the monkeys were "very aggressive" to tourists. However, I naively assumed that being a fairly outdoorsy person myself, I was used to dealing with wild animals, such as squirrels, birds, or deer, that became too accustomed to tourists.
Our first introduction to the monkeys was in the form of a Chinese man scurrying down the trail as we were making our way up. As he charged past, he threw out a single sentence: "Houzi laile! The monkeys are coming!" We took this as a friendly tip rather than it's intended purpose of a solemn warning.
Not more than ten feet after the man, we saw our first two monkeys:
These two put an quick end to our optimistic misconceptions. A couple of Chinese girls had been hiking just ahead of us up the trail. Within the first few seconds of spotting our group, the bigger male monkey made his way down the railing and made a beeline for the two girls as the smaller one watched impassively from her perch. The male monkey sauntered up nonchalantly, and with no pomp or fanfare, promptly grabbed onto the purse of one of the girls and began a fierce tug-of-war, complete with teeth baring and growling.
While the monkeys were distracted, we took the opportunity to nervously skirt the confrontation and hesitantly move up the trail. Behind us, the girls managed to wrest the purse from the monkey and hurried after us. Both monkeys followed us all in lazy pursuit.
You would think that this would have been enough to make us book it through monkey territory without looking back, but being all too confident in our own abilities, we decided to wander through, taking pictures and marveling.
Look at that face. So innocent.
It was all fun and games, until someone got jumped:
As we had been dawdling along, the monkeys had been surrounding us without our notice. The ones at the rear had become bold. With a single leap, one of the largest latched onto the back of Jono and violently began to try to rip the pack from his back. Jono stayed remarkably calm during the entire ordeal, continuing to walk as the Macaque pulled at his hair, bared its teeth, and yanked at the pack. At the bottom of the mountain, we had been given bamboo walking sticks as "protection against the monkeys". I tried to use mine now to poke the monkey off of Jono's back, but this proved to be a futile effort. With terrifying ease and unexpected strength, the Macaque ripped the bamboo from my hands and snarled. I scooped my bamboo up and retreated to a safer distance. Jono finally managed to get the monkey off by pulling off his pack, dumping the monkey onto the ground, shaking the pack from its grip, and then hightailing it up the trail, with a small band of monkeys in hot pursuit. At that point, we were all more than happy to get out of monkey territory, so we made quick time up the path, keeping close together and slamming our bamboo sticks onto the ground in front of the monkeys whenever they came too close.
With this trial behind us, it was time for our next big challenge. This came in the form of stairs. Lots and lots of stairs.
So. Many. Stairs.
From some of the previous pictures, you can see that Chinese mountains are not particularly gradual nor gently sloping. Instead, they spring sharply from the ground. This meant that the trail, after the initial part, was a single, continuous flight of stairs, sometimes going down for a short while, but more often steeply ascending. However, even this would not have been so difficult, if it were not for the third trial: the snow.
As we reached the snowline, we were enchanted by the beauty of the winter landscape for a good hour. The snow blanketed the forest in a ghostly veil, and it was fascinating to see tropical plants thriving in spite of the cold.
The austere beauty of the place couldn't be denied. However, after a couple more miles of trudging through the snow, and inching our way up and down icy staircases, the snow began to lose its charm. We warmed up to the point of sweating whenever we were actively hiking, but any time we stopped for more than a few minutes, the sweat would freeze on our bodies and we'd lose feeling in our fingers and toes. We were constantly shedding and putting on layers. Nevertheless, we continued on, tying metal teeth to the bottom of our shoes for grip, and marching through the cold. Many points during the day, we nearly gave up on reaching our previously chosen goal of a monastery two thirds of the way up the mountain, in favor of a hot bowl of noodles and sleeping away the exhaustion. In the end, though, we trudged on through the cold. We saw beautiful sites, breathtaking views, and we eventually struggled up one last flight of stairs to reach our chosen monastery after ten straight hours of hiking.
The monastery itself was pretty bare bones. There was no heating (only some electric blankets for our beds), and the only food was that which the monks ate, meaning that there was no meat, and it mostly consisted of various kinds of pickled vegetables. Nonetheless, we stuffed ourselves with rice and vegetables that night, and slept like a rock with our electric blankets turned to the highest setting.
The next day, we started out early again to make the last haul to the top of the mountain. The first couple hours were more of the same: stairs upon unending stairs.
Eventually, though, the stairs began to even out as we reached a sort of ridge to the mountains. We spent the last hour or so on an incredibly enjoyable stroll through the beautiful winter wonderland at the top of Emei Mountain.
We reached the summit a little before noon, and took a short cable car to the golden monastery site at the top, where Buddhist pilgrims come to visit from all over the world. It was a glorious feeling to reach the top. Pride, exhaustion, wonder, and elation all mixed together. Most of the other people there had simply taken the bus from the bottom of the mountain, and I viewed them all with a kind of good-humored condescension.
Looking back on it now, it's so easy to look at these pictures and see only the beauty, but I can still remember only too clearly that bone deep weariness, the icy cold that digs into your skin. It was without a doubt the most physically demanding experience of my life thus far. However, in spite of that (or perhaps because of it), it was also one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
As James said at the end of the trip, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Partly because I will never again see anyplace quite like Emei Mountain, with its serenity, beauty, magnificence, and peacefulness. And partly because I have no desire to put myself through that ever again.
