After a long night and day of train travel in a very congested compartment we eventually arrived at Emei station. The train trip covered just over 2000km and took about twenty hours. The train’s maximum speed was 120 km/h and it carries around 1000 passengers.
Our carriage on train from Xi'an to Emei Shan
We made quite a few stops along the way for passengers embarking and disembarking in the many provincial towns we passed through. The train comprised 20 carriages and we estimated that it was just under one kilometre in length. In the early morning section of our train journey we passed through numerous tunnels cut into a steep hillside overlooking a large river which is apparently a tributary of the Yangtze.
The amount of infrastructure development occurring in China is staggering and throughout much of the travel time today we had views of cranes on multi-storey building sites plus road-works and large scale bridge building. For much of the journey we could see, adjacent to our railway line the works for the new ‘bullet-train’ line which is due to be finished in 2017 at a cost of Y38 billion.
On arrival at Emei we were greeted by our local guide Patrick. He bundled us into three small vans and we headed off for the Bauguo Monastery where we will spend the next three days hiking in the region around the sacred Mount Emei.
Arriving at the Bauguo Monastery, Emei Shan
Bauguo Monastery, Emei Shan
Mt. Emei is located at the southwest edge of the Sichuan Basin and is internationally renowned for its scenery and cultural heritage.
We were assigned dormitories in the monastery and then headed down to the local shopping area for a meal in Patrick’s restaurant.
Walking from Bauguo Monastery to restaurant, Emei Shan
After a quick trip to a mini-market we returned to our rooms and had showers. The communal bath-rooms are a fair walking distance from our bedroom and are only accessible between 18:00 and 21:00.
Tomorrow we have plans to spend much of the day hiking around the various trails on the sacred Mt. Emei or Emei Shan.