Our time in Wutai Shan....

I will admit up front that I was a bit of a grumpy bunny when we got to Wutai Shan - but it all started trying to get there. I really wanted to ride all the way there and deep down I was very disappointed. A was really good and put up with me when I started moaning (just after the start of the second climb when I was realizing that we weren't going to make it) about how monotonous the climb was and how it was all up all day and how the maps weren't telling me it was going to be like this and how not very pretty it was and how no one seems to care about the environment here....you get the picture :) She told me (nicely :) that she would flag down the next vehicle that came by us and organize a ride if I didn't shut up... and she gave me something to eat (which was part of the problem, along with not sleeping very well the night before) so I shut up :)

Later on we both decided it was a good idea to get a lift to our destination, so A got her book out and we found people to ask and we sorted it...but me being a grumpy bunny and worried about the bikes getting damaged, I stressed the whole way up! They were very nice, but they don't know about bikes and they just jammed everything in the van mish-mash, and the old guy was so concerned about the bike resting on my leg he was grabbing the bike out of my hand and A was saying "meiwenti" (it's not a problem/don't worry about it) at the old guy....he even took his gloves off so I could use them as a cushion! I tell you, these guys were so nice!!! (I didn't need the cushion, I have plenty of meat on my legs :):):) We piled out of the van with the guys rapidly unloading all our stuff onto the tarmac/dirt of the parking area and they were trying to be helpful and get us on our way, but we were going to be riding 15kms down hill and we were very cold and very tired and I wanted to make sure that we got the bikes put together correctly so we would get there in one piece - I was feeling hurried on all fronts. And I was starving! And I was freezing, even wearing bibshorts, thermal tights and my jeans on the bottom and my long john shirt, my Nike thermal hooded jersey (hood up, under my helmet) AND the Nike thermal windproof jacket that we got in Beijing (thanks Trek guys!!!!! :) plus TWO pairs of windbloc fleece gloves. My mental state was not the best....

So you know we arrived safely (you better have read my last post :) and we got food and we got sleep - just what we needed. The sun was out in the morning and it was warmer and we had our coffee...but the shower was cold :( Oh well, the woman at the hotel said it would be on in the evening so we decided to be stinky (after 5 months...this is not the first time we have given a shower a miss :). I was stressing about the next section of the trip - the maps had not been giving me the information I needed to plan very well and I was unsure what lay ahead on the road. We were so worn out that we knew we needed to stay another day in town before moving on, and the mountain is big! could we even ride out, would we need to get a bus...etc. We need to stay on schedule so that we get to Xi'an in good time to get the Tibet permits and train tickets and get to Lhasa with enough time to acclimatize to the altitude and the time we needed to get across Tibet. Ah, it's all very complex....or I make it all very complex :) A and I worked out something we were happy with and then we hit the town...we were hungry again :)

We found a bakery (my favorite kind of shop when I am hungry :) and bought some yummy things - a sweet bread roll, a donut twist and something akin to a Chinese Eccles cake but with light colored sweet filling - and sat in the sun at a very scenic spot (the Laughing Buddha statue) and ate. I felt much better, but I was still not happy that we hadn't ridden all the way and even though my legs were toast after the last 4 days of riding I was thinking that the next day I was going to go ride up and down that hill just to know I could do it - it looked formidable and I wanted to have done it. (Have I mentioned that A was her angelic self in putting up with me and my grumpiness???? :)

Well, we were in Wutai Shan and it is home to a ton of Buddhist temples and we have been doing a lot of Buddhist history and sights while travelling in India and China, so I put everything out of my mind and got out the Rough Guide and we started thinking about where we were and enjoying where we had worked so hard to get to. There are some really special things about this area - it's been a Buddhist center since something like 50AD. There are relics of very important Buddhists in many of the stupas in the area (that is what a stupa is for - burying relics under/inside them - you can't go *into* a stupa) and some very famous Buddhas came to the area a long time ago so many people come for that reason. There are also some cool things in some of the temples and a huge stupa in one of the temples...so we set off for the huge stupa, but we got distracted by another temple and went in there.

As you enter each temple you walk through a special entryway that has a statue of a Buddha (there are many and it will be a statue of the Buddha that the temple is for) and behind the statue is a statue of a protector (about the same size as the Buddha statue) and in the room with the statue are four HUGE statues of Lopalas, more protectors. The Lopalas are big scary monster men with colored faces, bulging eyes and lots of teeth showing - sometimes they are even stepping on little people! - one has a snake in his hand, one a rat, one a big sword and the last one has a musical instrument. They are recognizable and yet a little different for each temple. We got inside, past the Lopalas, and we looking around wondering where the special moving lotus leaves Buddha that this particular temple is famous for when...we were approached by a Lama who spoke English.

We got to chatting with this Lama and he said he was from a different temple (many of the temples also have monks and lamas living there) and would we like to go see his temple? So, always up for adventure :):):) we said "sure" and followed him up the hill to his temple. We spent more time talking about all sorts of things - things we can't or shouldn't talk about on the blog (because we know these links are monitored and because some of them are secrets :) so that we don't get anyone in trouble. But we had a Buddhist teaching and we learned a whole lot about a lot of different things (history and religion covers it in a general sense :). Then we said our goodbyes with a promise tom come back the next day and went off to see some other temples.

We took our tired legs to the temple at the top of the hill in town (way lower than any of the surrounding hills but plenty high enough for tired legs :) and had a look around there. Then we came back down and went back into the original temple that we had started to look at (when we had met the Lama) and found the moving lotus blossom Buddha, which is pretty cool, but we were the only ones there so they didn't make it move for us :(. They were closing up shop and we were hungry so we went off to find some food. We had another one of our amazing experiences at a restaurant - the waitress and a bunch of other gigglers :) gather round us and we communicate with maximum use of the book and we tell them that we don't eat meat, we don't want MSG and then we tell them what we do want (soup or vegetables or dumplings, etc.) and they bring out their interpretation of whatever we asked for...and it's always delicious!!!! We don't even have to try to navigate the menu :)

Then it was off to the iNet cafe and then back to the hotel for a hot shower and more sleep! The next morning we of course had lots of coffee and I was so wonderful that I also went off to the bakery and brought back more yummy things to eat - A said I had to bring back different things so we had red bean paste horns, one of the donut twists and a muffin. By now I was feeling much better about Wutai Shan - my mood was better and I know that the ride in was too big of a ride to do on the loaded bike, but it would have been great fun on my road bike :) We were going to ride out of there and then on to Taiyuan, so we planned our escape. We decided to chase the CITS (tourist information) people to see if we could get them to book our next round of hotels. The guy in Datong had done such a great job that we wanted to try again. That was a mistake!

First we had to find the CITS office and we knew there were 2 in town. We asked directions 3 times and didn't get the same directions twice! In fact, the last guy we asked was almost right in front and he sent us down the road, if I hadn't spotted the sign from the parking lot we would have missed it. We went in and tried to speak to the lady that seemed to be in charge. Her English was ok, but not great. I wrote everything down for her (dates, locations and that our max price was 150 per night) but she said we had to come back after 11:30 to see her manager. Well it was only 10:30, so we went off to chase the temple with the big stupa :) That was pretty amazing and I spun a ton of prayer wheels and then we came back to the CITS. The manager still wasn't there. So the CITS lady walked us down to the other CITS office and she and another woman started calling on the phone and arranging the hotels. She gave us a list of hotels on a piece of paper (not the CITS form that the Datong guy had used, just a plain piece of paper) and then gave us a receipt for 600 yuan - that is all 4 nights at our max price...hmmm. And the receipt was for "hotels", nothing specific about which hotel and when. When we asked (and we asked a ton of questions) they hadn't even booked the hotels in our name, just for 2 foreigners (um, that's specific :). The manager finally arrived and he spoke no English at all (the Rough Guide says that the CITS guy may be the only English speaker in some towns...maybe we assumed too much in thinking that they all spoke English?) and frankly, he looked slippery - like an obvious mafia guy in a movie. They told us to come back at night...not evening. Hmmm. We decided they were not at all professional and we were going to do the hotel thing on our own - A and her magic book :) And then it was time to eat lunch! (yes, we are hungry all the time :)

We went back to that restaurant from the night before and ordered the noodle soup again :) And then we went to seek out the Lama so he could take us to one of the temples outside of the main town....it was raining. No problem - we are not made of sugar, we will not melt :) We collected the Lama and we walked down to arrange a taxi and to buy some offerings (this is an important part of it) and then we were on our way. The temple was situated in a beautiful location, on a hillside surrounded by trees. The bonus was that we passed the road out of town that we would take the next day, so we knew what the start of the route looked like :). We walked around, made the offering, took some photos and asked the Lama lots of questions about who was this and what was that and he also exlained about the Lopalas :) They are kings of various heavens and they are in their scary incarnations. Ah, it was really good and we learned a ton! Then the Lama invited us to dinner - he is from Inner Mongolia and he invited us to a Mongolian restaurant that he knows well.

He knows it VERY well, he is from the same village as the people that run it! When A told him that she was a vegetarian he gave her that same look that my uncle has for vegetarians (ooo, sorry that you have to suffer from such a terrible disease...better you than me :):):). He ordered some food and some beers and we continued our discussions of...history and religon :) The food was great! And it kept coming!!!!! There was so much of it we were stuffed! The first to arrive was a bowl of pickled vegetables, it was potato or turnip (hard to tell) that has been soaked for a long time in salt water - we immediately thought of our friend the pickle fiend :) Then there was a plain omlette, a mutton stew with vegetables, some mixed greens in a light sauce, then a similar dish to the mutton stew, but made with tofu and then the most fabulous "cakes"!!!! They were similar to a stuffed paratha, sort of, a thin layer of dough on the outsides and filled with bits of lamb and onion and then fried...wow, they were so good. I was already pretty full and I ate 2 of them (they were the last to arrive) and if I had eaten another thing I would have exploded! We had definitely done a great job of carbo-loading for the ride out the next day :) Then it was getting dark and we had to fix A's puncture and get packed, so we walked the Lama up the hill to the door of his temple and we went off to get our stuff sorted out and then get to bed, ready for the ride out the next day.