The previous post is Shaolin (June 13).
The next post is Xiahe (June 15).

Enroute to Lanzhou (June 14) · Jun 17, 03:48 AM

I’m up before 06:00, but the students are up before me — I hear them outside. In the hotel restaurant I have porridge, two boiled eggs, and two large fried bread things. After breakfast I check out and leave my backpack with the reception desk. When I step off campus, I inside the Shaolin area. A minibus driver takes me up to the Pagoda Forest for Y5, insisting that I won’t need to buy a ticket because it’s so early. The forest is still shaded, and I only meet two or three other people during the forty minutes I’m there exercising. On my way out I snap a few pitures with my new camera — this is a neat place.

Next I head up the hills for the Dharma cave, but it’s too far for me — I turn back after reaching a small temple. It’s 09:30 before I buy a ticket and enter the Shaolin Temple; the crowds are here. The Temple is a cool place to have been, but it’s not outstanding as a temple. After about thirty minutes I wander out and walk up the valley to take a 2700m cable car up towards Shaoshi Mountain. The cable car bypasses the base of the mountain, and I continue from the cable car station on a footpath that continues up, hugging sheer rock mountainside. At the precipitous hanging bridge (which I cross), I turn around and retrace my steps back to the cable car, back to the valley, back to the hotel, but I stop short. There’s an hourly wushu demonstration I want to see — twenty minutes of acrobatic wushu. I pick up my backpack from the hotel afterwards and return to Luoyang on a hot bus.

I’ve only had one small roll of Ritz crackers since breakfast, so I stop in on my favorite shop across from the Luoyang station for a plate of noodles, then buy some detergent (my green pants have a gum stain — I haven’t worn them in three weeks), then spend time online transcribing journal entries. On the way to the station I pick up food for the trip. I have an upper bunk on T197. There is even air-conditioning.

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