Mt Emei · One overnight, booked on its own
A monastery on Mt Emei shuts its gates to the public at 5 pm. You stay inside — vegetarian dinner, an evening with a senior monk, chanting at six, and a kungfu class at seven, before the Golden Summit.
Emei is one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains, and it is large. Between nine and five it is also very busy.
The hours that are not busy are the ones the day-trippers are not there for: dusk, and the hour after six in the morning.
So the design of these two days is simple. You stay for those hours.
Day 1 · 10:30Day one, on foot
Green bus to Wannian · cable car optional · then walk
The green bus takes you to the Wannian Temple parking area — the Temple of Ten Thousand Years — and you go up by foot or cable car, your choice. From there it is roughly two hours walking down to Baoguo, past temples, a river, pavilions and a lake. Downhill is deliberate: it is the direction on this mountain that leaves you able to enjoy the evening.
Day 1 · 12:30Not on the itinerary sheet
Villagers' restaurants · lunch is excluded, on purpose
You eat in the villagers' restaurants at the foot of the walk — local bamboo shoot, local sausage, local cured pork. Lunch is excluded from the price so you order what you want rather than what a group menu decided. Also: the monkeys are real, they are bold, and they will take an unattended bag.
Day 1 · 18:00The next twelve hours
6:00 pm · inside the monastery
At six your twelve hours begin. Dinner is vegetarian and eaten inside. What is unusual is not the food — it is that the building has emptied. The monastery has been closed to the public for an hour, and the courtyards you walked through in the afternoon now have nobody in them.
Day 1 · 19:107:10 pm
Introduced by your guide · then the evening is yours
Your guide introduces one of the senior monks, who talks about his own practice and answers what you ask. It is not a lecture and there is no set length. Afterwards you have the temple and the grounds to yourself until morning, which is the part people describe afterwards rather than the talk itself.
Day 2 · 06:00Six in the morning
Chanting 6:00–7:00 · the room is simple and clean
The monks begin chanting around six and go on for about an hour. Getting up for it is optional and strongly recommended — it is the reason to be inside the building rather than in a hotel down the road. On the accommodation: it is simple and clean, and we would rather say that plainly than dress it up.
Day 2 · 07:00Outside the temple
Emei has its own school · and he will correct you
Emei is one of China's named martial arts traditions, alongside Shaolin and Wudang. The class happens outside the temple, first thing, with a master who teaches properly — meaning you will be corrected, repeatedly, in front of the others. Nobody minds. Everyone is equally bad at seven in the morning.
Day 2 · 11:00The top of the mountain
1.5 h bus to Leidongping · 30 min hike · then the cable car
An hour and a half of bus to the Leidongping parking area at 2,430 metres, half an hour on foot, then the cable car to the summit. Monkeys again on the way, and bolder up here. What you get at the top depends entirely on the weather, and we will not pretend otherwise — on a clear day it is the sea of cloud everyone comes for.
Most itineraries run this the other way round
Almost every Emei itinerary puts the summit first and treats the monasteries as things you pass on the way up. That produces one very long day and a photograph.
This one inverts it. Day one is a downhill walk and an evening that only exists because the gates shut at five. Day two you are already on the mountain and rested, so the summit is a morning rather than an ordeal.
The two things guests write to us about afterwards are the chanting and the kungfu class. Both happen before eight in the morning, and neither is possible if you slept in a hotel in town.
A standalone overnight, hotel to hotel. Tell us a date and we'll confirm the monastery can host.
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