Solo trip to Leshan and Emei Shan part 1

Last weekend we had a free weekend and I took a big solo trip to see the giant Buddha in Leshan and to attempt to climb a Buddhist mountain called Emei Shan.  First, I took the city bus to the long-distance bus station (then had to wander around for 30 minutes to actually find it...).  Had to buy a ticket on my own.  I planned ahead and had the destination written out to show them.  Here's what a typical bus ticket looks like. If you know a little bit of Chinese, they aren't too hard to decipher (and if you're one of those folks, you'll probably quickly be able to figure out that this is a different bus ticket than my trip from Chengdu to Leshan).

After riding about 2 hours, I got to Leshan, and then changed to a local city bus to get to the giant buddha.  Lest you think my Chinese skills are awesome, I should probably mention that I knew ahead of time which bus to take and how much it would cost....  I have not been terribly spontaneous here with my travel, even within Chengdu, mostly because of the language.  But if you plan things out pretty well, it's not so bad!

This was my first glimpse of the Buddha.  It's about 233 feet tall and carved into the side of a cliff next to a river.  Once at the top, you can then go down a narrow staircase to see the full height of it.  That would have been more fun if there hadn't been at least 4 billion people there pushing and shoving the whole time.  Welcome to China.  

First you wait in line for a long time.

And you are reminded 'not to parabolic' (which I think would be more correctly translated as 'don't throw trash off the edge.'

Then you take the obligatory selfie (and somehow it looks like not very many people around me - not sure how I pulled that off!)

And start down the stairs

The bottom is waaay down there.  You are looking at his chest on the left, his left arm in the middle, and a little bit of a foot on the right of the photo.

And here are the stairs - actually pretty wide through here - they got narrower later on.

You can view it from a boat too.

A hand (and really narrow stairs!)

Here's a good view of the stairs I just came down.

And a view of the Buddha looking back up.

Buddha's right foot with a person for scale.

Lots of religious stuff going on down here.

When you are done at the bottom, you get to climb back up by a much less interesting staircase and then go behind the top of the head.

Apparently there are standard poses you must use in Chinese photos.  One is holding your arm out like you are giving the object (in this case, the buddha) a hug?  For photos of just people, the peace sign seems to be required.  

There's an interesting temple at the top also.

Inside the temple.  I'm not sure if I was allowed to take the photo or not, but the bit that interested me was that apparently this icon likes Oreo cookies.  If you look on the table where the flowers are, there's a blue package of them left as an offering.