It was one of my last weekends here in China and my host-family planned to go to Emei Shan – Unesco world heritage since 1996 – to show me the beautiful view on top of the mountain.The journey began on Saturday morning at 6 o´clock. We took the bus to get to the city right next to the mountain. Quite early but mei you shijian (no time) because we only had one day to climb up.
Three hours later we arrived at our hotel room which I shared with my Chinese family. Kind of an adventure I thought, but fun nevertheless…

While having a walk we got to a beautiful forest area with hidden temples. One of them – quite interesting and something have never seen before – was run only by female Buddhists.
It took me a while to adjust to the walking speed of my family because my host-mum loved taking photos – of everything and everybody all the time!

So at the end of the day we were exhausted, but still had enough time and energy for delicious Chinese BBQ. It only cost us 16 RMB for about 30 various sticks. One of the things which makes me love China. Well fed and satisfied we fell asleep early as we had to get up again at 6 am the next morning to conquer Emei Mountain.

Because my family isn´t that sporty we decided to take the comfy way: Bus and cable car up to the top! It took us 3 hours anyway…
But even during those few steps we had to take, we saw some cheeky monkeys taking food from tourists, beautiful valleys and a lot of other Chinese people who all tried to catch a photo with me… No worries, I got used to that!

Finally we arrived at the golden summit and got to see the bluest sky – including a sea of clouds – you can only imagine, leaving the Chinese pollution and fog right behind us!
It was so cold that we only could take pictures with gloves on to catch every moment of that perfect scenery. For example, the golden Buddha surrounded by dozen of monks praying for healthiness, money and a long life.

We walked around and took pictures as not to forget a single corner of that beautiful area. And of course we had around 20 kg of snacks, soups, noodles and sweets to kill for lunch – which we enjoyed under the sun we hadn’t seen back in Chengdu for the last few days.

But unfortunately we only had two hours up on the mountain before taking the same way back home!
The next time I definitely would conquer that mountain by climbing…
Bye Bye Emei!

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