Chapter 196

Distance covered: 300 km (total 3750 km)

Up at 7 to get a good start before it gets too hot. We drove to the Buddhist temple 15 minutes away, nestled in the mountains, up a steep flight of stairs. There are quite a few in the area, some are hidden, some are on mountaintops and look like intimidating fortresses, which I imagine they doubled as, after all we are in a frontier area not so far from those horse-riding savages that were the bane of China for a long, long time. There are also segments of the Great Wall, or should we say Great Walls, as there has been a few incarnations over the millenia, from impassable brick structures with garrison towers to small continuous mounds of dirt meant to slow down and funnel more than stop.

The temple was nice, free to get in, and nobody pestered us about the dog, in fact a middle-aged monk scratched him on the head while muttering his “Amitofu” to us. So he’s a real animal-loving Buddhist then, not a NIMBYist like those at the restaurant in Beijing.

I was the one driving today, so I fixed the girlfriend a stiff 8 AM gin-tonic from our supplies in the trunk. I put on some Hank Williams III and rolled on those snaking mountain roads for a while, until we reached the town of Daixian where we had the region’s typical thickly-cut noodles for lunch. Not bad at all, but I prefer the rich flavor profile of the similar biang-biang noodles from neighboring Shaanxi province. We took a digestion walk around the imposing drum tower and then retreated to the car to escape the intense heat.

We drove to Yanmen Pass, which used to be the de facto border of the Empire, with a fortress on top a stupidly high mountain and segments of Great Wall in places that were passable for the filthy toothless stinky Mongolians and their horses. The place was unfortunately closed after a part of the pedestrian path got flooded by heavy rains, and coincidentally, it started raining just after we walked around the empty parking lot to look and take pictures of the valleys around us.

After going down the mountains, we got on the highway for a long segment of flat corn fields. Eventually more mountains appeared in the mist, and within them was our destination, the “Hanging Temple”. It is a popular tourist site, as we could see from the filled parking lot and crowds of tourists yelling at one another like the recently-moneyed up peasants they are. It felt like my ears were getting raped by a powerdrill. There were also touts walking around peddling plastic raincoats, even harrassing me, who was literally wearing a raincoat. Not pleasant.

The Hanging Temple was built on a cliff side, which was pretty impressive from afar. We didn’t get close, as the place had a firm policy against pets and also the tickets were a laughable 115 yuan. Chinese tourist sites are the most expensive in the world, and oftentimes their value is inversely proportional to the price tag, relying on the sheep mentality of all those obedients cogs in the machine flocking there to get their picture taken and get the bragging rights.

So fuck that shit. It was a much better idea to drive on the first dirt path we saw and find a place to set up camp. It was on a ridge by a corn field, with really cool views of the mountains. I opened an IPA from Lost Coast brewery that I had managed to keep cold with (now long melted) icepacks, sat on a foldable chair and admired the surroundings, before catching up on my diary and making dinner. I cooked pasta with pesto, tuna paste and sauerkraut, it would have been even better with cheese but for now we only have dry or canned food. I opened a bottle of wine that Dancing Davey had gifted me, that he most likely received as a gift himself but being a non-drinker, he had been leaving it to accumulate dust on his shelf. Some French stuff. The girlfriend did the dishes, and we went to bed early, after watching the new Rick and Morty on my laptop and reading a bit.