Climbing, climbing, climbing… photos from our visit to Qingcheng Mountain this past Sunday. Those who choose to climb the Mountain ascend stairways and paths to an altitude of almost one mile.
Inside one of the temples near the top.
The smell of incense is everywhere, as is the sound of the temple gongs.
The scene at the bottom of the mountain is sheer madness, with honking cars and trucks, and hoardes of pilgrims and weekenders. Going up the stairways that climb the mountainside, you feel more like a shopper on the escalators of a giant department store than someone “getting back to nature.” Still, I heard the most amazing cricket sounds here, deep and loud, some of them sounding like screeching machinery in a factory. It’s unreal.
At the top it’s slightly less hectic. Those who “can’t quite” make it are carried by teams of porters in sling chairs suspended between bamboo poles. Some of the people I saw being carried up were quite large, and I marveled at the strength of the small porters!
Our group ate lunch in a restaurant attached to one of the temples, then descended, some on foot and some (like me) by the cable car/ski lift.
