#ibmcsc China 30
Second day of the holidays and as I mentioned in my last post yesterday, we had planned a trip to Luoyang (Henan Province) which is about 1.5 hours long bullet train ride from Xi'an. There are two historic places near Luoyang, the Shaolin Temple and the Longmen Grottoes.
The day started very early as we had to take the first train out of Xi'an to be able to use the day to the maximum. The high speed train station at Xi'an looks like an airport and the train itself is very comfortable, and obviously, very fast. It touched the speed of 300 km/h a few times and ran at 275 km/h most of the time. I wish India had such trains to connect major cities. One day may be...
Our first stop, the Shaolin Temple, is the cradle of the Chinese Zen Buddhism and the Shaolin Martial Arts. It is said to be 'the Number One Temple under Heaven'. The temple is among the mountains and needs a little bit of walk (about 5 kms in all) to see everything. The mountains and a mild drizzle made the temperature drop and it was nice to walk around. The main attractions here are the Martial Arts show by the monks, the main Shaolin Temple, the Pagoda Forest and the cable car to go up on the mountains.
The next stop was the Longmen Grottoes and though we had seen the pics on the net before leaving, seeing it with our own eyes was something else. There are thousands of caves and holes each with many statues of Buddha (about 100,000) carved out of the rocks. The caves are on two sides of the river Yi and the views from the top are breathtaking. Here are some of the pictures from our trip.
Second day of the holidays and as I mentioned in my last post yesterday, we had planned a trip to Luoyang (Henan Province) which is about 1.5 hours long bullet train ride from Xi'an. There are two historic places near Luoyang, the Shaolin Temple and the Longmen Grottoes.
The day started very early as we had to take the first train out of Xi'an to be able to use the day to the maximum. The high speed train station at Xi'an looks like an airport and the train itself is very comfortable, and obviously, very fast. It touched the speed of 300 km/h a few times and ran at 275 km/h most of the time. I wish India had such trains to connect major cities. One day may be...
Our first stop, the Shaolin Temple, is the cradle of the Chinese Zen Buddhism and the Shaolin Martial Arts. It is said to be 'the Number One Temple under Heaven'. The temple is among the mountains and needs a little bit of walk (about 5 kms in all) to see everything. The mountains and a mild drizzle made the temperature drop and it was nice to walk around. The main attractions here are the Martial Arts show by the monks, the main Shaolin Temple, the Pagoda Forest and the cable car to go up on the mountains.
The next stop was the Longmen Grottoes and though we had seen the pics on the net before leaving, seeing it with our own eyes was something else. There are thousands of caves and holes each with many statues of Buddha (about 100,000) carved out of the rocks. The caves are on two sides of the river Yi and the views from the top are breathtaking. Here are some of the pictures from our trip.
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| I like trains :) |
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| The Pagoda Forest |
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| Longmen Grottoes... the biggest Buddha statue among thousands |
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| River Yi |
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| All the holes in the rocks are like caves with Buddha statues |
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