China - Stop One: Xi'an

After completing the So Cal Ragnar, Annie and I headed to Beijing for a two-week stay in China. We made a 12-hour stopover at the the Linton's home to drop off much of our luggage and then took an early morning flight to Xi'an.

The above is a picture of the bus we took from the airport to the Terracotta Warriors. This turned out to be quite the cultural experience as they crammed 40 people in this bus (seating for 16 was available). As we were the only non-locals on the bus, it was like a scene from The Three Amigos when we entered the bus.

The highlight of the day was visiting the Terracotta Warriors. Annie and I were both impressed with the amount of detail on each of the warriors. On the statue below it is possible to see the individual lines for hair that the sculptors placed on the head of this warrior.

We made our way back to Xi'an and made a stop at the Bell Tower and then to our hotel. After spending the better part of the day on our feet, it felt good to sit down and enjoy a meal.

The next morning we took a bullet train to the mountains to conquer Mount Hua Shan. This mountain is dotted with Taoist Temples and there are a number of people who make a pilgrimage there each year to worship. In order to get to the to the different temples we took a gondola and then hiked along the precipitous stairs and trails.

One of the really fascinating aspects about building on the mountain is that everything is brought up by foot. This is quite incredible when you consider the fact that there are multiple hotels and temples scattered throughout the mountain. Here are a couple of locals hauling food and supplies up the mountain.

After a few hours of hiking we finally made it to the top of the South Peak (the highest of the peaks).

We placed a lock on top of the mountain (tradition to take the lock and connect it to the chains along the path - we saw tens of thousands), ate a quick snack, and took a few pictures before heading back down. The rain started to fall and the crowds thickened making the descent a little more precarious. The other issue is that the line for the gondola was about an hour long so we decided to hike down the entire way. In all, we think we hiked about 15,000 stairs. The thought of inexpensive massages gave us hope as we travelled down the last few hundred stairs and reached our bus.

Look for highlights from our adventures to Guilin and Yangshuo in a later posting...