Hehe
I finally went to see the Tian Tian Buddha, one of the five giant Buddhas in China. And it is HUGE!!
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
To get to the Buddha, you have three choices:
- Take a bus
- Ngong Ping 360 cable car (the quick touristy option)
- Hike 10km
We chose to do number 3.
Which was quite the adventure.
Adventure #1: Finding the trail
The trailhead is nowhere near the beginning of the cable car service at Tung Chung. Rather, you have to first walk around Tung Chung to the mountain and then finally start the trail. Luckily we had found some directions on a hiking blog, but we still got lost.
But then we found a nice local student who walked us to most of the way to the trailhead, even though it meant walking the opposite direction from her home. We really appreciated her.
Finally, after 45 minutes, we got to the trailhead.
Adventure #2: The first tower
The Buddha hike is considered a pretty tough hike and they weren't kidding. The hike to the first tower (there are 5 in all) was stair after stair after stair. Plus it was 89% humidity that day so basically I was dripping with sweat BIG time. It was disgusting and difficult and I wanted to cry. In fact, at one point it got super hard to breathe, like the beginning of a panic attack. That bad. I was pretty sure I had made the biggest mistake of my life. 10 km of this? I was going to die.
The view from the first tower.
But luckily for me, the hike to the first tower was the most difficult. The hike to the second tower was a little bit easier. I was regaining confidence. Then we stopped for lunch at the C15 marker (the halfway marker).
And lunch reenergized me (but notice how bloomin red my face is). And then before we knew it we were at the third tower and we got our first glimpse at Buddha!!!!
And within the hour we had finished the trail!!!!!!
Then we made our way to the Buddha.
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