Ice and Fog! Touring China's Mystical Mountain // Chongqing Vlog Part 2
Mountains ..have always been my favourite things. After a night's rest, our adventure continues in Chongqing, China. Okay so the adventure continues. We will be going for more sightseeing. Word is that we are going up some mountain today which you know is speaking my language. Slightly more continental today with some bacon and sausages but also a bunch of other Chinese stuff.
That looks very Chongqing. So we hit the road and the weather remains pretty much the same as yesterday. A vast blanket of wet fog over everything. So we are at a rest stop after a pretty long drive. Got ourselves some drinks. Weather remains very wet.
We bought ourselves some "Zongzi", rice dumplings. And they were as tasty as we remembered. All the while, our bus continued to traverse the misty countryside as we travelled from Dazu to the southern district of Nanchuan, enjoying the sight of the towns and terrain en route. That's some nice mountains! So we are headed to this mountain called "Jinfoshan" which means Golden Buddha Mountain. We'll see what it has in store!
So it says "东来金佛山 滑雪泡温泉" which means come to Jinfoshan in winter do some skiing and dip in some hot springs - which sounds like fun but it's certainly not the season for that quite yet! Arrayed before us were the Dalou mountains, wrapped in the ever-present fog and strikingly reminiscent of a Chinese brush painting. Really makes you feel like you're in China. Honestly, pretty incredible. So we've already gained quite a bit of elevation earlier in the bus and we are about to gain more because there appears to be a ropeway ride next so what's pretty impressive also is how little tourists there are so we probably are in an off-peak period or something but it's nice not having the queue The raindrops on the glass veiled the mountainous terrain outside, but what we could see of the landscape, choked with clouds, was nonetheless breathtaking. Okay so word is that we are at about 2,060m now, so it is significantly colder up here.
No surprise there! We were greeted at the courtyard by a blinding fog with traces of sleet and ice riding the freezing breeze I think there's a little snow and ice mixed into this drizzle here. It is pretty cold. okay, i think we are about to get some lunch first of all which is nice - we can use some fuel to endure this frigid environment. It's actually not much warmer inside here but the steaming food, i'm sure, is gonna make a difference. White raddish and hot soup - simple enough dish but incredibly comforting in the cold.
What can I say, cold is the best spice for warm food! but honestly the food is quite good. I think the mushrooms that they have is taken from the surroundings in the mountains so the mushrooms tasted pretty good Seeing a lot of dummy snowmen down there. Probably this is kind of a snow recreation center later in the year when it actually gets snowy. Okay so this is "Gufodong" which means "Ancient Buddha Cave" and apparently there is a naturally formed Buddha figure inside of the cave so we're going to be checking that out.
So we've got a number of Buddha statues here and in particular this one right here is naturally formed so I guess that's kind of the star of show here. The cave interior was surprisingly roomy the product of an ancient subterranean river. and at its centre was a natural rock formation that does indeed resemble a languishing Buddha. There's actually kind of a crack in the cavern above the Buddha figure, almost like kind of a rupture in the sky, so that's pretty cool. So this is rather interesting.
So here you can get yourself a floating lotus. There's a candle in the middle so you light it and then you let it into the water to kind of ask for good fortune I guess. But what's interesting here is that this place is unmanned and you can kind of just make your little payment with this QR code over here and then help yourself to a lotus. Not quite natural obviously but quite the piece of work. Apparently there are 1250 of these figures all across this little cavern here surrounding this figure of the Buddha.
Wow, so the cavern actually extends further and so do the sculptures all the way. I couldn't find out who made these sculptures nor when they were made but my guess is they are modern. Certainly, a spectacle nonetheless. Okay, we are done. This entrance is still really really atmospheric. I really liked it. Anyway, we're off.
Coming down even harder now. You can quite clearly see it. It's not awfully cold though. famous last words, but... The weather was deteriorating and while it suddenly feels atmospheric, it's going to make matters a little complicated for us.
Jinfuoshan is also known for beautiful nature walking trails, but with the blustery weather quickly darkening the day, it was starting to look forbidding to tackle them. We decided to forge forward nonetheless on one short trek. Very slippery conditions. We're having several cases of people slipping and falling already.
I think it's going to limit how far we can go down this trail because of "hazardous trail conditions". We'll see how far we can go. Against the weather, we came eventually to an open lookout point, and saw in the distance the ethereal dark shapes of great mountains. Okay, so this is "Jin Gui Chao Yang", which means "Golden Tortoise Facing the Sun" and the reason for that is that the shape of the mountains here the front part resembles the tortoise's head and then the back portion where it comes up it looks a bit like the tortoise's shell so it's kind of like an enormous tortoise.. and presumably the sun could be there some days but clearly not today Fanciful imagination aside, it really does look quite awe-inspiring. A towering monument of ancient rock, seemingly adrift in a sea of clouds. "As in a Fairy Realm" It's really coming down now.
That was worth it though. That was pretty cool. The ride down was also breathtaking, with the weather clearing a little, giving us another good look at the great tortoise. Okay here we are. We're back all the way down to the gate that we were at this morning. Having spent virtually the entire afternoon up there, we still I think missed a few things that we were supposed to go and see.
Mostly because of the weather really slowing us down. The fortune for me is that I don't really know what we missed so I am free to just be pleased about the stuff that we didn't. Okay, so we are apparently not done with the day. We have one more itinerary [item] that was on the brochure, so we actually have to come here. It's kind of an old town, old street kind of place as well.
But as you can see, it's a little bit on the deserted side of things. Looks kind of nice. I think they actually saw our group coming in and they turned on the lights so this looks pretty nice now. But clearly this is an off-peak period because there's barely anyone else around here. I may have spoken a little too soon as the section a little ways down had some signs of life. Regardless, it was pretty quiet.
and the rain left a wet reflective pavement that nicely complemented the lights. So somehow everybody just got kind of absorbed into this little shop here, trying to get some snacks and stuff for the road. But no cap, I actually kind of like the look of this town. It's very, it's actually pretty nice. Our bus took us to the neighbouring district of Wulong.
After a long ride through the darkened countryside, the lights of a rather spectacular looking town came into view. This, however, wasn't our destination as the bus swerved into a dim, narrow road leading up another mountain. [To your right, take a look at this pyramid-like building] [This is our tourist information center] It'd been a long day and we were very eager for a nice big dinner. So this is apparently "Zhulongyan" which means "bamboo basket feast" something like that. We were treated to a variety of steaming food served on dinnerware made of bamboo. Quite delicious and a little less intense compared to last night.
So somehow my cup of beer keeps on replenishing itself. Fortunately, the beer here is, you know, on the light side of things. So anyway, we've come from one mountain and now on to another one.
This is "Xiannushan", which means Fairy Mountain. And apparently the reason for that is that this place tends to be covered in cloud and fog throughout the year So basically Silent Hill but kind of with a more romantic imagination to it. We are very certainly done for the day though. We are going to be heading to the hotel now and collapse.
Any sightseeing is going to be tomorrow. And so we settled in for the night in our hotel in the mountain town of Xiannushan. And that is of course because on the next day, we're going to be checking out some of the incredible natural attractions nearby. Don't forget to subscribe so that you can come along!
2025-02-23 05:03
