My detour into the Chinese hinterlands led me to the Shaolin Monastery. Not originally somewhere I had intended to go, but a nice excursion with lots of historical significance. The Shaolin Monastery is the home of ALL martial arts (or so it is said) - that and lots of Kung Fu Movies ;)
I had two days here and I didn’t feel it was enough. Dengfeng, the local town, is charming, cheap and 'local’; a great place to just explore on foot or by bike. The surrounding Songshan Mountains could provide days worth of exploration, and the Shaolin Monastery is but a blip - an afternoon at most - in the liveability of this town.
So, after spending a day hiking I fell in love with the place and spent the majority of my second day hiking as well. I’d come here for the Monastery and spent two days here doing everything but the Monastery - so I spend the afternoon watching Kung Fu shows and visiting the monks around their temple.
I was fortunate to meet up with two other adventurers - one from Germany and the other from Canada, who I spend most of the two days together with. Udo, the German had been coming to China and travelling for 25 years - fantastic!
The evening of the first night we were quite lucky as we happened to be there right when the Mid-Autumn festival was happening. The hostel owner cooked us homemade dumplings and we enjoyed moon cake together. We headed out into two where we crashed a Chinese Wedding (politely by standing back, drinking beers and watching the live bands perform).
Overall a good excursion. Check out more photos from the Monastery and Mountains: https://www.flickr.com/photos/14859193@N07/sets/72157636277659895/