Bukhansan National Park, Seoul
I was fortunate to have a free Saturday in Seoul to do a bit of exploring. Though my Beijing colleagues and friends kept telling me how lovely Beijing was — high teens or even 20 degrees, sunny — I’m afraid to say Seoul was quite cold — at or below freezing most of the time, and my Italian psychologist colleague seemed to take a perverse pleasure in reminding me that the cold winds in Seoul are coming down from Siberia. They felt like it. Yet despite the cold grey weather, it was a pleasure to escape to Bukhansan National Park, an area in northern Seoul amply blessed with imposing granite peaks (at 700 to 800 meters high, above a city that’s pretty much at sea level) and wonderful hiking trails. The park has some historical significance, both in terms of defense of the capital from various invaders over the centuries, and for all the religious temples that are scattered over the mountains. I thought of my good friend Steve’s comment from one of my Beijing hike shots, about how the temples perched on the ridgetops and hillsides were quite lovely. Here are some shots that give you a sense of the park, including a few with temple shots.
Bukhansan National Park, Seoul
These next are basically three miscellaneous images that give another side
of my experience. The (bad, sorry) photo of me grinning is trying to show how amazingly steep were the trails I was on: the metal ropes you see are basically there either so you can rappel down (in my case) or haul yourself
up (if you were going the other direction). It was tremendously fun and made me wish I had my climbing shoes instead of running sneakers! The little bird was remarkably friendly and unafraid of me: I couldn’t decide whether it felt like Bilbo in the Hobbit, where the thrush (or whatever it was) helped him get into the back entrance to the Lonely Mountain, or something out of
Hitchcock’s Birds…but this guy was so little and cute, and cheeped at me like he wanted to talk, so I took it as a sign of nature’s bounty. The hazy shot of the city shows you how this park sits literally above the northern parts of Seoul. Sadly, it was pretty gray – it cleared up today, when I flew home…
Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yunnan
My friends Howard and Gene visited me for two weeks in January. The
highlight of their trip — at least for me — was the week we spent exploring Yunnan, which is one of the southernmost provinces of China, and
which contains an absolutely amazing range of landscapes, climate zones, and minority cultures and histories.
Of the week in Yunnan, the easy highlight for us all was two days we spent hiking Tiger Leaping Gorge on the upper Yangzi river, and exploring parts of Yulong Xueshan, a 5500-meter high mountain that forms a beautiful and
impressive wall of rock on the southern/eastern side of the gorge. This
introductory shot captures much of the essence of our hike: the flowering plum and beautiful hillsides, with the massive and magnetic bulk of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (that’s its English translation) in the background.
I’ll explain much more as we go along, but for those wondering or keeping
track: in the next few shots, one in particular is not sorted quite as I could wish. The shot looks down on the river from up above, and you see a few little boats pulled to the shore. This is, in fact, the ferry with which we crossed the river at the beginning of our visit to the gorge itself. (See later for the full story.) Also, pause a moment at the shot that looks down a vertiginous gully at the river itself, being joined by a small side stream that’s coming from high up on the north-west slope of the gorge. It’s disorienting since the drop is so sheer and far, but if you study it for a moment you’ll get more of a sense of how amazing this canyon is. All three of us, passionate visitors to the Grand Canyon, found this area equally beautiful, though not as vast.
(so much world, so little time....) 