sichuan walking TREK

A 14-day walking and mountain climbing tour through remote Chinese countryside.  First, five days walking through classic farmed countryside.  Stay in peasant homes.  Wander through rice fields and tea terraces.  Shower while pigs watch.  Visit local temples.  Listen to old monks go on about their lives.  Tour pottery factories and tea processing plants.  Eat farm food that you help pick.  Get to know your hosts. Then, a four day climb up and down sacred Mt. Emei, one of China's four big Buddhist mountains.  Stay in temples each night.  Dine with monks.  Awake to early-morning chanting.  Climb through a Chinese landscape painting complete with waterfalls.  Dip your feet in rocky rainforest rivers.  Ward off ubiquitous monkeys.

With international and in-country travel and rest days – 14 days.

Itinerary:

Day 1: You fly out of your city.

Day 2: Arrive in Chongqing by train or plane, evening.  Stay one night in Chongqing, near the Yangtze river docks.

Day 3: See Chongqing in the morning.  Then take the bus to Rongchang, a small city of 70,000 where traditional Chinese culture still reigns.  Here you can experience the type of slow life typical to Sichuan: drinking lemon tea by the river, strolling the streets, eating street hotpot, buying clothes.

Day 4: Relax and explore Rongchang.  In the afternoon, head out to the countryside for a night in a small nun's temple on the hill (with only one nun and several lay practitioners.)

Days 5-6: Walk west these two days, across rice paddies and vegetable gardens, and small hills. Spend the two nights in farmer's homes, and be treated to their overwhelming hospitality.  See what life is like for 800 million Chinese.

Day 7: Walk into the town of Anfu, and take a bus back to Rongchang.  Eat stick stick hotpot, drink pearl milk tea, and relax.

Day 8: Leave mid-morning for Mt. Emei.  Take a long (7 hour) bus ride across the countryside, toward higher and higher mountains.  Spend the day trying out various roadside snacks and listening to Chinese karaoke on the bus (this latter part not guaranteed.)  Finally arrive at the base of Mt Emei, an 11,000 and some peak, rising from very low elevation.

Day 9: Climb to Hongchun Ping (Red Spring Terrace) Temple and sleep the night there.   This hike is through old farmland now being reclaimed to be a part of the park, and passes many temples where we'll have time to stop and look.  We'll eat at small shops along the way.  Today we'll pass through the zone of the cultured monkeys, who are friendly and will eat from your hands.

Day 10: We'll start the morning with coffee at a friend's shop.  Climb to Xixiangchi (Elephant Washing Pool) Temple and sleep the night there.    The hike is steeper today but not very far.  The trail winds past secluded waterfalls, through old growth forests.  Dine tonight with monks in their dining room.

Day 11: Breakfast with monks.  Hike to top, the Golden Summit, and see the famous temple there.  Talk with monks here also.   Stay the night on the very summit, and hope to see the sunrise the next day (rare because of rain and fog -- but incredible if you can see it!) and also the Buddha's Light, a small circular rainbow.

Day 12: Hopefully see sunrise.  Take the bus down the mountain and then to Chengdu.  Check into a hotel and rest.  .

Day 13: Go silk shopping and clothes shopping, or rest, or visit a Daoist temple.

Day 14: Fly out of Chengdu airport to Beijing and out.