The Temple Trek

Wanting to do something different during one of our weekends, I asked Jun if he was interested in visiting the National Forest Park of Mount Guanyin in Dongguan. He said he was and asked if we could invite his cousin to come with us. I was okay with it. We then decided that we would go visit on a Sunday morning.

On the day of our excursion, everything was going fairly well. We woke up early and took the metro to the train station. We soon got our train tickets and were on the short ride north of Shenzhen to the town of Zhangmutou. As soon as we got off the train it started to pour. We were a bit worried that the rain would negatively affect whether we could go around the national forest. Fortunately, the rain started to lighten and we took a taxi to the entrance of the forest park.

We decided that we would be adventurous and hike up to the Guanyin Temple. To begin we had to climb up a series of stairs; from the top of the stairs we could start the winding journey around the forest towards the temple.

Along the walk we saw some cute topiaries of different animals, such as panda bears. The view from the path allowed us to see how far we would have to go to reach the temple. To get to it we had to cross different mountains as we went up towards the top.

As we were making progress on the trail, it started to rain. At first it was light, but then it got to be torrential and we were all soaked. We were lucky that we were able to find a place to shelter and wait out the rain. That would be the last of the heavy rains while we were there. As soon as the rain became a drizzle, we continued on to the temple.

After going up the steepest part of the mountain, we finally made it to the top. The view from up there was beautiful. The dissipating cloud cover allowed us to see the surrounding area. The temple complex itself was quite nice. At the center of the complex stood the Statue of Saint Guanyin, a bodhisattva of the Mahayana Buddhist School.

As we walked around the complex, we saw these colorful pigeons flying in one area of the temple grounds. It was quite a sight.

By the time we had walked around the temple, we were ready to go find something to eat besides the snacks we had brought. So we were soon on our way back to the entrance and off to eat.