This afternoon I went with a couple of friends to a place called Mudu and from there we went to one of the Temples near Tianping mountain where we had lunch which consisted of rice noodles and mushrooms with bamboo. A little salty but not too bad.

I thought I was going to have relaxing afternoon being carried around like Lord Muck but there must have been a strike ’cause there was no bugger around to carry me. Anyhoo onwards and upwards.

The sun was shining and Spring is definitely coming. It didn’t take long to shed my jacket as we started to climb up the first hill.

It’s not the prettiest of places but it was good to get out from the city for a while. Underfoot it was very slippy, but going up the hill isn’t so bad, it’s coming down is the problem. When you reach the top of this hill it immediately begins to drop just as steep as the climb was. But going down as I said is a  bit more difficult.

The view from the bottom after I got down in one piece thankfully.But as you can see you no sooner reach the bottom that you have to ascend the next hill. But it’s really good. It’s the most difficult walk I have had to do since I was in Thailand in December and I think I will be coming back here again. There was one crazy guy on his mountain bike climbing up and down these hills, not sure what he was on but he must have been super fit to get up these hills. We stopped to watched him from one side of the valley, watching him traverse along the many paths that lead to the top before he would turn down another at breakneck speed. Hat’s off to him ’cause it was bad enough trying to walk at times never-mind being on a bike.

He came flying passed us on this section of the hill and it’s really steep. We were holding onto the trees to stop ourselves from slipping all the way down the hill. Mind you I found another way to travel and was to get down on me hunkers and just let gravity assist my descent.

After about 3 hours of walking we finally came across a road, a real road which was a relief because no one really knew if we were going in the right direction. To our right there was a wee hut and this was the back entrance into this place below.

We had come to Dragon Pond scenic spot where there was the Phoenix Pool, where you could hire a Bamboo Boat or one of the really awful looking communist boats that just looked like really sad rip offs of some western character.You have to admit that these are some of the saddest looking creatures on boats you would have seen for a while. These are all the rage in North Korea I believe.

I think we walked around 11 kms or so which is quite far for the first walk in a while and my calf muscles are talking to me as I sit waiting for the taxi to take us back to our car which is somewhere over the mountain. They don’t use Uber here, they use Didi which of course is all done from your mobile phone and is very cheap. For the 15 or 20 min journey back to the car it was around 30 rmb which is very cheap. Generally transport is cheap here considering the fuel prices are not. And so tonight I pigged out on dumplings and a kind of kebab which is filled with spicy meat and vegetables ’cause I think I deserve it.