Day 3: Once in Chengdu, we got breakfast and looked for the bus station. Chengdu was cool and a bit gloomy early in the morning, but we found our way (by another bus and more walking) to the bus station for Emei, where we also found Jason! Jason Loose is another flagship student, who came to Chengdu on the train and is hiking Emei Shan this week as well. The station was ridiculously crowded, but we managed to get tickets, and now we've been on the bus for about 45 minutes. The last 24 hours have been among the longest in my life, but nothing can hold back the fab five for long, and now we're the scintillating six!
The bus lasted a couple hours, and we found ourselves in Emei, the town at the base of Emei Shan. It was green and bright and felt like a cheerful place. We took two buses to the base of the mountain, getting lunch in between. Lunch was at a place on a plaza outside; it had really good noodles and fried rice. Once at the mountain, we found the Teddy Bear Hotel, where we rented a room for an hour to shower and change. Showering felt so good, as did taking off my shoes for the first time in over a day! We left some stuff there and consolidated bags - Joel and Josef were sharing a bag, Seth and I were sharing, and Nicole and Jason brought their own. And at 2 pm, we finally started up the mountain.
We came to a monastery first, but it ended up being a little off the main path. After wandering for a bit, we finally came to the main gate at 4 pm, to officially start our 52-kilometer hike. Nicole doesn't have a student ID here, but she got through on her BYU ID with the help of the lady behind the counter. Emei Shan is a verdant, wet mountain with streams and moss-covered stones everywhere, and there are thousands upon thousands of steps along the trail.
After a little while of hiking, we started playing 20 questions, and I got distracted and we took a wrong turn. Not entirely my fault, but I was in the lead, and we ended up taking a road down the mountain a ways before I realized we probably weren't on the trail. Detour #2 for the day! By this point, we pretty much gave up hope of reaching the peak before Wednesday. However, mostly undaunted, we continued with our hike (and 20 questions - Nicole nearly stumped us with 'bullets', and I went a long time before anyone guessed that I was thinking of 'supply and demand'). It started getting dark, but we pressed on to the nearest monastery. We had to go through a monkey area to get there, but we didn't see any, and after hiking in the dark for a couple hours, we made it to a monastery. We ran into a group of deaf Chinese tourists there that we had first seen at dinner on the trail (there are lots of little shops and restaurants every few kilometers), and we all ended up sleeping in the same big room on mats on the floor. One of the deaf guys came over and Josef and I had a conversation with him on a pad of paper.
Staying in the monastery was really cool. The bathrooms were filthy - dirt/mud tracked all over the floors and squat toilets that were just a hole in the floor - but we survived. At least I think we did.
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