The fifteen-kilometre road from Emei town runs west to
BAOGUO , one long, straight kilometre of hotels and restaurants, before fizzling out at a T-junction. Baoguo's
bus station is about 500m before this intersection, close to the
Teddy Bear Café, where you'll find average food and Patrick, the English-speaking proprietor. He's very helpful, lending out walking sticks, looking after your excess bags, and organizing tickets onwards for a nominal mark-up.
At the intersection, turn left for upmarket rooms, bank and booking office at the Hongzhushan Binguan (tel 08426/525888, fax 525666; ¥150-200), or right for Baoguo Si , a large and busy Song-era temple. Rebuilt and enlarged during the seventeenth century, four main halls rise one behind the other up the slope, decorated with carved doorways which open into courtyards containing bonsai and flower displays. The porcelain Buddha in the Sutra Hall is eye-catching, with its red-lined black garments covered with tiny golden icons, and it's said that the huge Ming-dynasty bell here, encrusted with characters, can be heard 15km away. You can, of course, stay and eat at Baoguo Si itself, or carry on past the temple to the Forestry Hotel, a drab affair with languid staff and fairly basic rooms (dorms up to ¥30, rooms ¥30-75).
If none of these appeal and you want to start up the mountain, there's another road heading off towards the lower paths from near the intersection. Twenty minutes along in a forest of nanmu trees is Fu Hu Si (Taming Tiger Temple), a comfortable place to rest up, with seemingly limitless accommodation on hand. Here you'll find the Huayan Pagoda , fourteen storeys but only 7m tall, cast of bronze in the sixteenth century and engraved with 4700 images of Buddha.
Moving on from Baoguo, minibuses leave from the bus station to drop-off points for Qingyin Ge, Wannian Si and Jinding, but they need at least sixteen people to run and so depart infrequently after the early morning rush. You can also get transport to Chengdu, Chongqing, Ya'an and Leshan either from here or down in Emei town - make bookings for these and the train through the Teddy Bear Café or the pricier Hongzhushan Binguan.
The southern route
The southern route up the mountain from Baoguo and Fu Hu Si takes you past some minor sights to
Chunyang Hall , where you can spend the night and take in some panoramic views of the summit. From here it's a gentle climb past
Zhongling Si (Mid-peak Temple) to the tiny wooden
Qingyin Ge (Clear Sound Pavilion), on a rock at the hub of two streams and several paths. On the far side is the charming
Niuxin Si , the Ox Heart Monastery, the nicest place to stay on Emei; forest looms overhead, water gurgles through a miniature gorge, and you may encounter the mountain's famous
bearded frogs - at least, the males are bearded, females make do with stripes.
From here you can follow the quicker northern route to the top by pressing on for 3km to Wannian Si, or continue along the southern route by following the path past the left side of Niuxin Si; this takes you along a river bed and past a monkey-watching area and swimming spot, before starting to climb pretty steeply through a series of gorges. About two hours later, Hong Chu Ping , the Ancient Trees Terrace, is the first possible stopover, after which it takes about the same time to tackle the often steep and narrow stairs to Xian Feng Si (Fairy Peaks Monastery). This is another nice place, well forested with pine and dove trees and planted with camellia and rhododendrons. Over the next two hours it's partly down to a dragon-headed bridge, then ever up to where the trail joins the north route at Xixiang Chi .
The northern route
Most people start their ascent by catching a bus from Baoguo to various drop-off points for the northern route . The first of these is 15km along at Jinshui (¥5 for the bus), start of the forty-minute path to Emei's oldest temple, Wannian Si (Myriad Years Monastery). Last rebuilt after a devastating fire in 1945 which claimed all but the seventeenth-century main hall, Wannian's pride is in a dumpy pavilion out the back, whose bare whitewashed bricks and thousands of tiny iron Buddhas surround a stunning sculpture of the Bodhisattva Puxian (also known as Samantabhadra ), riding a gilt lotus flower astride a great six-tusked white elephant. Puxian reputedly visited the mountain in the sixth century, and this huge bronze statue was built on imperial orders four hundred years later, and brought from Chengdu in pieces. The temple's accommodation is frugal, but the food is good and you should find that the atmosphere makes up for any discomfort. Evenings are alive to the drone of the monks' chants and the sing-song of their bells reverberating through the halls.
It's less than an hour from Wannian to Niuxin Si and the start of the southern ascent; or stick on the northern trail and a steady four hours through thick mists and groves of bamboo and pine should see you mounting the last slippery steps to Xixiang Chi , a pool where the elephant carrying Puxian stopped for a dip on his way up the mountain. Finely set on a hill top, a nearby temple is not as imposing as Wannian but has a fantastic view, surrounded by groves of age-old trees and rhododendron bushes. It's another four hours on to Jinding from here, but if you plan to stay the night you'll find that the temple's position at the meeting of the ways makes for crowds - get in early to be sure of a bed.
Beyond here the path gets easier, but you'll encounter gangs of aggressive monkeys who threaten you for food with teeth bared. They tend to pick on women; showing empty hands and calling their bluff by striding on seems to work, daunting though their response can be - you'll probably feel safer with a stick in your hand at this point. The path continues through thick woods to Jieyin Hall , where the fifty-kilometre-long road from Baoguo Si, which has snaked its way round the back of the mountain, ends at a cable car connection to the summit (¥40 up, ¥30 down), and the area is thick with minibus tour parties fired up for their one-day crack at the peak. It's also somewhere to find a lift off the mountain on your way down, if you've run out of time or steam (¥20 back to Baguo; 90min). Hotels around Jieyin look good, but have a reputation for rudeness once they've got your money.
Whether you take the cable car or spend the next couple of hours hoofing it - not to be attempted without crampons in winter - Jinding , the Golden Summit (3077m), is the next stop and, for most, the main reason to be up here at all. The name of this bland temple, set in a terraced complex near the cliff edge, derives from its former shiny bronze roof, replaced in 1989 with bright yellow tiles. You can stay the night here or at nearby Jinding Dajiudian (tel 0833/55247045; shabby doubles ¥150-200), and then get up at dawn and join the swarms huddling on the terrace in the hope of catching the sunrise , which is marvellous on a good day, as it lights up the sea of clouds below the peak. In the afternoon, these clouds sometimes catch rainbow-like rings known as Buddha's Halo , which surround and move with your shadow, while in clear conditions you can even make out Gongga Shan , 150km to the west. On a bad day, Jinding is wrapped in wet, cold clouds, with the huge broadcasting mast looming above the temple complex the only scenery. In these conditions you certainly won't be tempted to plod on for a final hour - or take the monorail (¥50) - up to Wanfoding (Ten Thousand Buddha Summit), Emei's true 3099-metre-high apex.
