We arose early for a 7am bus to Chongqing to board our 3 Gorge boat trip. The early start was rather annoying as the boat didn't leave Chongqing, a five hour bus away, until 9 at night but we were told the early start was in case of the bus breaking down on the way. That explanation rather lost it's credibility when we were told that we could pay a fee to get a bus later in the day instead. That bus obviously never breaks down then! 5 hours later we arrived in C...

Once again slaves to the sun we rose at 6 and headed to the peak to hopefully watch the spectacular sunrise. We were well prepared this time, as veterans of another peak sunrise, and dressed in pretty much everything we'd got, including managing to tuck our sleeping bags around our middles and inside our jumpers. Sadly, we'd not accounted for being so far West but in the same time zone and so had a long and lonely wait for an hour before others joined us and the ...

Unfortunately during the night there was a storm with high winds that caused loose doors to slam all over the temple so our sleep was less than satisfactory during the night. We revived ourselves in the shower and prepared for a big day ahead. We had a couple of cookies and resolved to hit the trail hard for a couple of hours before stopping for a proper breakfast. the trail immediately after the temple was steep and tough and we'd definitely made the right decis...

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 bu...

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 bu...