Tài Shān 泰山 or pilgrimage to the reverse of 5 RMB

Tài Shān 泰山 (Mount Tai), located in Shandong province, north of the city of Tai'an, is one of the 5 sacred Taoist mountains of China and is often regarded the most important of those five. It has been a place of worship for more than 3,000 years..

...and it has made it to the reverse of 5 RMB :)


On Saturday morning 7:00 am started by bus from Rizhao to arrive around 11:40 to Tai`an city and after a short stroll headed towards the mountain to start our hike to 1545 m high summit.

There are several ways to reach the peak of the Tai Shan:
1) hiking all the way (for the dedicated pilgrims)
2) bus to Middle Gate + hike to top (for the lazy pilgrims)
3) bus + cable car (for the pilgrims afraid of stairs ;)

We hiked both up & down (as true pilgrims ;)..and as I am writing this ..my leg muscles are still in pain :)

For our hike towards the summit we chose rarely hiked Eastern route and saved the Central route for the descend.

Welcome to Mount Tai :)


The day was beautiful and our chosen path was beautiful :)


Once upon a time there was a tea house..


A man and his authentic Taishan souvenir :)


Breathtaking views (or as it was written in the website of the Mount Tai:"you may feel the shock of heart when looking down..." :)



Artistic moment of hike


We reached the summit exactly by the sunset time :) And aftet the sunset the wind got real wild... we wondered around a bit in the dark to find a place to stay for the night and managed to find a place on the very summit :)



We had read about the unique marvelous wonders of Taishan: the rising sun at dawn, the jade plate of sea of clouds, the aura appearing around Bixia Temple, rosy clouds at sunset..

Rosy clouds of sunset - done!
6:00 o`clock in the morning it was the time to wake up for yet another miracle...sunrise :)
jade plate & aura seemed somewhat mystical for us to be able to identify them ;)

At sunrise time we realised that we were far from being the only ones on the top (as it might have seemed when we wondered alone in the dark previous night).... many more sunrise miracle seekers were rushing to the sunrise viewing rocks, but after a rather chilly wait sunrise didn't go exactly as expected... sun decided to go straight to the clouds... :)


Excited sunrise seekers :)




Quite an inhabited mountain summit (named: Jade Emperor Peak) where we stayed the night. Some hotels, restaurants, temples..


Rocks (human made miracle?;)


Morning prayer




One true hiker ;) ( those green army coats were available for rent everywhere to make sure you don`t freeze while seeking sun-rise or sunset ;)


South gate - entrance to the top of the mountain


Our team by the South gate...ready for a steep hike all the way down (~ 9 km)


Steep...
On the way up our "step counter" showed 14 000 steps and we did the distance in about 4 hours, on the way down around 17 000 and also about 4 hours

But...must say....this central route would have been a really crazy hike uphill, so we had chosen well ;)




happy to be going downhill :)



Pancake for breakfast anyone?:)


All the food items are told to be carried to the top this way... even though it`s hard to believe about ALL THE ITEMS... we did meet a couple of strong men along the way!



Red bull art

Red bull soup :)


On the way down we saw many temples...



and some temple fun :)


..and then we also saw something else...


...and, of course, many important rocks..


Middle path gate - Zhong tian men


Now in Latvia you will often see couples getting married locking their love in a similar way... small country = few locks, huge country = a bit more locks ;)


Tea



And on the way back we had an unplanned adventure - we had a chance to participate in 4 hour traffic jam - 4 h just stuck with other cars & tracks without any idea of when we`d move... It turned out there were 2 traffic accidents, so instead of 3 h trip we enjoyed 7 h in the bus - great fun!