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Nicole, Dan and I arrived in Chengdu at 5am on Sunday morning and collapsed, asleep, on the sofas of the Lazybones hostel bar. We were woken two hours later by Beth and Cat, who'd stayed there the night before; another two hours later, we were all on a stuffy bus on our way to Leshan county. From here, we would take another bus to Emei Shan, a famous Taoist mountain we were hoping to climb. We were planning to follow the example of several other PT volunteers who'd climbed Emei Shan during Spring Festival by catchinh a bus nearly to the top of the mountain, hiking the remaining 4-5 hours, spending the night in a monastery and waking for the sunrise next morning.
At first, all seemed to be going to plan: we found a woman who offered to drive us to our-start point for less than the official bus price, saved 50Y on our entrance fee with our student cards and befriended the guys who carry sedan chairs up the mountain. Just as we were about to set off though, Nicole realised she'd lost her camera, Dan realised he'd not brought the memory card for his camera and Beth's camera ran out of battery. Not great, but the weather was good and the forest around us was really pretty, so we set off happily enough. Within an hour, we'd left the tourist stall and constant rest-stops behind and the steps up the mountain (every Chinese mountain I've climbed has been cut into steps) had grown very steep. After an hour and a half's walking, a couple of people were quite tired and looking out for the next rest-opportunity, so we stopped two guys we passed descending the mountain and asked them how far we had left to go until we reached the monasteries where we'd be sleeping. We were expecting to hear two and a half, three hours; we were told ten hours. Ten hours! Beth and I were horrified, and pulled out our map to work out where we were, which was Nicole and Cat's cue to point out the difference between the bus station where we'd got off and the bus station where we should have got off. We'd unknowingly dismounted about 10km further down the mountain, at the half-way point instead of near the top. They'd thought we'd known this and wanted just to climb the mountain, not reach the top; we'd had no idea. After a quick debate, we decided that we'd rather go back, catch a bus to the right place and try to reach the top than just keep climbing to nowhere-in-particular, so we turned right around and plodded back all the way we'd come.
We had to wait a while for the bus we needed, and then it was another hour's journey before we reached the top bus station, but we did get there fairly easily. Unfortunately, during this latest bus journey a huge fog had descended on the whole mountain, and by the time we dismounted it was so thick that we couldn't even see the other end of the car park we were in. Everyone else on our bus was heading straight into restaurants and hotels around the car-park (it was 5pm now), so we were by ourselves when we stomped off through the gloom and started to climb again. We hadn't gone far when the path was interrupted by a large temple; a woman came out to offer us beds, and told us that there was nowhere for us to sleep any higher up the mountain, but we weren't falling for that, so we laughed and kept walking. The fog was really bad now; Nicole was tiring by now, and whenever she dropped more than a few meters behind she'd be completely hidden by it. We walked for an hour, and then a bit longer, and then a bit more... every now and then, we'd pass a little shop selling snacks, or maybe a tiny restaurant, and the owners would call out, offering us beds and meals and telling us we wouldn't find them any further up the mountain; every time we'd shake our heads and keep plodding on. About the same time it began to get dark, we conceded that maybe it was time we ate and ducked into a small restaurant outside a monastery for (a not very good) dinner. The women in the restaurant offered us rooms for the night and told us it was too late to climb any further, but we shook our heads at their prices and set off again, this time into the dark. Nicole was the only one of us who'd had the foresight to pack a headtorch, but the rest of us had bamboo walking poles with which to feel our way and the steps were easy to follow so the darkness didn't make too much difference to us. Nicole was less than impressed with our decision to keep walking, and even less impressed with my pep talks ("if we were Sam and Frodo the ring would never get to Mordor" was probably not the most helpful thing I could have said) so she was definitely pleased when we reached the top of the cable car, and the little hotel beside it. With that in mind, I don't want to know what she wanted to do with the rest of us when we refused this latest offer of beds and insisted on climbing further up the mountain, into what was now complete blackness.
Another 10 minutes later, we came out into a wide open space where two women we closing up their shops, ready to head back down the mountain. Here, the path split two different ways; not knowing which was the right path, we explained to the women that we wanted to sleep at the top of the mountain and asked which way we should take. They pointed back down the way we'd come. We shook our heads and pointed to the other two paths; they shook their heads and pointed down again. This continued for a while, but eventually the women relented and pointed to the right-leading path. We followed this along, and Cat rang Nold to ask for details of where he'd stayed when he climbed the mountain before. Even he told us we should go back down to the last hotel, but we are nothing if not stubborn so we ignored him and kept walking. Now, the steps were beginning to widen - so much so that the sides were lost in the mist. A white bulk loomed out on one side and we saw that the way was now lined with large elephant statues; a little further again and we saw a great pyramid of little red lanterns glowing out of the darkness. 'Ooh,' I remember thinking, 'this temple's fancier than I expected!' Except it wasn't the temple, it the was the giant monument at the top of the whole mountain; we'd accidentally walked so far that we'd summited that night. It was so dark by now that we could barely see a thing: we mistook for a pond or a crevasse what later turned out to be a rug laid beside the monument, and when we tried to take photos of each other, everything was hidden in white smudges of fog.
You might be thinking this is the end of the story, and our stupidity for the day, but no. We still refused to climb back down the way we'd come to the last hotel, and instead wandered off into the blackness after some lights we could see in the distance. These turned out to belong to some public toilets, so we wandered off and began knocking and asking for room at a collection of little buildings we found nearby. Nobody would offer us a bed, but one guy said he'd take us somewhere that we could sleep, so we followed him cheerfully back to the public toilets. He paused here and pointed, which we took to mean we should sleep there, so we fell about laughing. He shook his head and led us on further, through a twisty path amongst some trees and then along a high, exposed part, finally dropping us off at a little house whose lights were on and whose door was open. We thanked him and went inside, but the man who came to meet us, whilst friendly enough, would not let us sleep there. He had no spare beds, no we couldn't sleep on the sofas, no we couldn't sleep on the floor either, it didn't matter if we gave him money... why? because this wasn't a hotel, it was a meteorological station. We were all very aware of how ridiculous things had become, but somehow none of us were worried, the whole thing just seemed hilarious. We were now lost in the dark and the fog, late at night with nowhere to sleep, but all we could do was stagger about shouting weather puns at each other and laughing hysterically. "This isn't the right way, there must have been a MIST-ake", "which is the right path? My memory's a little FOGGY"... The public toilets were large, warm and clean so Dan and I thought we might all sleep there (now there were toilet puns: "you know urine trouble when you have to sleep in a public toilet", "this is a s*** idea", "I know, I'm flushed with embarrassment about it") but the others sensibly refused. We went back to knocking on the doors of nearby buildings, but after seeing the prices at the one hotel and being turned down by several more governments buildings (even Dan's flirty "hello handsome" openers couldn't convince the builders we met to take us in) we were forced to admit defeat.
In the end, we spent the night at the hotel by the top of the cable car. All the lights were out by the time we reached it, at around 10pm, but we squeezed through the partly-open patio doors and found some staff. Dan had a room to himself, and we four girls shared an awful night's sleep in two single beds pushed together. The mattresses sagged badly, so we all ended up rolled into one big uncomfortable pile in the middle of two beds - fantastic. I didn't even mind getting up at 5.20am the next morning, because I couldn't bear any longer in the bed(s).
We walked back to the summit - now a familiar route - with other guests from the hostel, still hoping that the views of the morning sunrise would compensate for the debacle of the day before... obviously this didn't happen. Our view this morning was even worse than it had been the night before, something I hadn't thought possible. We went to stand on a viewing platform with everyone else, and stamped about in the cold for over an hour, waiting for the sun to rise, but all that happened was that the mist grew a slightly lighter colour. We couldn't see a thing. I've now spent several hours only meters from the monument at the top of Emei Shan and, if it weren't for photos on the internet, I still wouldn't have a clue what it looked like.
On the way back down the mountain, it rained.
- comments
Jo 5 stars for persistence all of you, you've really no business looking so relaxed and festive in all the other Chengdu photos after an escapade like that. Great read xx