With decidedly rose-timted glasses affecting our judgement we'd come to the conclusion that climbing a mountain had been such fun that we wanted to do another, bigger one. Therefore the task awaiting us for the next couple of days was to climb Emei Shan, a 3,099 metre peak considered one of China's four buddhist holy peaks. After a big Western breakfast (you can't climb a mountain on noodles alone dammit!) we hailed a taxi to take us to the bus station for the bus to Emei town at the foot of the mountain. On the local bus out we found that the half-unmade road played havoc with the bus's already creaking suspension and had to stop at one stage for the driver to fix something down below. It was obviously not an isolated incident as the driver had the spanner he needed sat next to his seat!

After the main bus it was into a minibus to reach the base where we were starting our climb. Sadly, due to our slightly late start and the vagaries of travel we'd only reached the base at 4pm and had 2 1/2 hours to reach a temple with beds before sundown. We tackled the lower reaches with gusto and reached a suitable temple after two hours. With the walkway ahead shrouded in mist and the map incredibly ambiguous about distances between temples we decided not to try and press on for the last 1/2 hour of light. The going had been pretty hard for the first few kilometres too and we decided to save our legs for what the map promised was a gruelling hike on the second day.

We were pleasantly surprised to find our room not only had lighting but also had electric blankets on the beds, something the Lonely Planet had warned was quite rare on the mountain. The blankets were vital, we soon learned, as some bright spark had installed the windows the wrong way round and they didn't close all the way, letting a hefty draught blow across the room. The beds were cosy though, and they'd obviously heard we were coming as the duvets bore the legend 'Brief Love' all over the pattern, the homo-eroticism was intense!

We headed down to the restaurant area and found a huge pile of vegetables in the corner for us to choose from (no meat of course in a Buddhist Temple!). We picked out a number of beans and leaves and had it all freshly stir-fried in oil, ginger and chilli and wolfed down the results with a big bowl of rice. With little more to do we headed back to our room and updated our respective diaries and read until sleep took over.