Thursday, January 20, 2011

Hanging Monastery (悬空寺)















First stop on our travels was Datong(大同)in northern Shanxi province. The first image is out our hotel window. I had wanted to see Hanging Monastery here for a long time so we set out early in the morning on a bus headed for Hunyuan county(浑源县). There we were fortunate (or maybe unfortunate because I know I paid too much, but its the off season so options were limited) to be greeted by a driver willing to drive us the rest of the way. Altogether it took about 2, 2 and half hours to get here and probably spent only about 30 minutes climbing through monastery. It's really pretty small but it was still very interesting and especially great that it wasn't crowded or that we had to follow the clearly marked tour path. Mt. Heng(恒山)is really nearby so I renegotiated with the driver and he agreed to take us there and wait while we walked around. Pictures to come tomorrow!

2 comments:

BlessedMomof 5 said...

Love your Datong pics! Caleb is from Datong so I would love to see as many of them as you will share :)

Eric Jones said...

I'm glad you like them! Unfortunately I don't really have any of Datong itself, they're mostly from the surrounding area (Hengshan Hanging Monastery and Yungang Grottoes, the former 2 being about 2 hours away). I was only there a day and a half and didn't really get to wander the city, it looked like an interesting place though.