Climbing the tallest holy mountain

There are four holy Buddha mountains in China: Mount Wutai （五台山）in Shanxi, Mount Emei (峨眉山） in Sichuan, Mount Jiuhua （九华山） in Anhui, and Mount Putuo （普陀山） in Zhejiang. As I consider myself culturally Buddhist, one of my goals in life is to pray at all four holy mountains. As a young girl before I left for the U.S, I visited Mount Wutai with my mother. When I came back to China to visit as a teen, I went to Mount Putuo with my father. In June, I went to pray at Mount Emei with a friend. Each instances, I feel the connection you make as you pray is distinctly different, yet held together by a common thread.
Mount Emei is the tallest of the Holy Mountain, where the temperature at the Golden Peak is usually just slightly above freezing during the summer. You can hike the mountain all the way up, from Baoguoshi all the way to the Golden Peak. That usually will take 2-3 days, where you can take rest at the local "motels" or monasteries. My friend and I took the bus up to close to the Golden Peak, then stayed at the Golden Peak Hotel, so we can wake up early to catch the sunrise. Unfortunately, the weather was uncooperative and we waited in the clouds for an hour without success. What was cool however, was the mist. It was so cloudy that you can barely see a few feet in front of you. Even at the base of the golden Buddha, I was unable to see it clearly.

We also spent a day hiking down to the Elephant Pool, which is just a silly little temple were people can see the monkeys. The monkeys are CRAZY! They're fat, greedy, and completely unafraid of humans. If you touch your bag, they will come and attack you until you have food! My friend and I were definitely attacked by these oversized monkeys and required other hikers to fend them off for us. Yikes. On the way up from Elephant Pool, we missed the last cable car up to the Golden Peak, resulting us in hiking over 30 kms and 8 hours on our journey. I felt very tired, but super accomplished afterwards.
 

We climbed over thousands of these stairs.