Day 12: The Great Buddha of Leshan and Mount Emei

Today it’s time to repack. We only take our backpacks with us. The rest stays with the driver in the car. Our tour guide Maya explains to us in the car on the way to Leshan the origin of Buddhism. We are already slain. We can hardly process so much information. After 2 hours we arrive. We look at the big Buddha of Leshan. First we take a bus to the ascent. First we go up to the head of the huge Buddha. There are 333 steps to the top. You can see well how the three rivers flow together here. The huge sitting Buddha has a height of 71 meters, his shoulders measure 28 meters. On his head 1,051 hair knots were attached. He is hewn from sandstone, only nose and the 7 meter long ears are made of wood. 

To see the Buddha in all its size, we descend on another side and then have to go up again, because it is only possible to get down to the car from the head. Yes, it was exhausting and yes it was worth it. An amazing view. You can hardly imagine how something like this can be built at all. Let alone at this time from 712 – 804 AD. Unfortunately, we had no time for the beautiful complex above. At 1 p.m. we had to go on again at the latest.

After another hour of driving, of which we hardly noticed, we set off on Mount Emei. First we take the shuttle bus, which goes through a gorge. After 1 hour and 40 minutes we have gained a lot of altitude. Then climb stairs to the cable car. That’s another 140 meters in altitude. After the cable car, a few steps to the hotel. Again a surprise, simple, clean and absolutely acceptable, quite contrary to our expectations.

Quickly unpack and then straight on to the statue. You guessed it, there are some stairs to go again. Oh WOW, how lucky we are. We just caught the beautiful gold statue with sun and blue sky. We can still take really great pictures before everything gets cloudy. As soon as the sun is gone, it gets fresh. We have dinner together with our tour guide and fall into bed at 8 pm .

Today it was again over 12000 steps and about 1000 steps, partly over 2600m and at 3000m, so you can be tired.