Blessing of the Buddha

good morning everyone, or rather i should say good afternoon, its 12:55pm here and guess what???i just woke up!!!!!Yang Li is coming back today, so i am a little excited, i tried to call her but she is not answering.......i don't know what the reason can be, maybe she is with her family now.



well in the past few posts i have discussed a little about myself, but well most of you must be wondering how the life is in China, or maybe some of you might be thinking what do the people do here other than eating noodles.........



well for the past one month i have been travelling a lot, all around China, and frankly speaking the more places i visit, the more i fall in love with this country. maybe many of you don't know that the world's largest Buddha statue is present in China. it is located at a place called Le shan, about 7hours drive from where i live, that is, Luzhou. during our vacations, my first destination was Le shan.

well actually it was completely unplanned. my best pal Ripu was supposed to go there along with a chinese friend of ours whom we named Mark. Mark is a local of Le shan and he invited Ripu to spend the vacation with his family. Ripu was waiting for me in front of Mark's dormitory, so i rushed there...........and guess what happened..............he (Mark) invited me too and i accepted. so that very evening Mark and Ripu went to the bus station and booked my ticket.

i was so excited because it was my first trip outside Luzhou, but to tell you the truth the journey was not very comfortable..........i mean imagine sitting in a bus for 7 hrs, nothing to do, can't even move your legs properly; and to top that nature's call..........it's really hard to admit but i was dying to shit, but unfortunately i had to control myself. Mark told us that we will have to stay in a hotel for that night and he will come in th morning to take us to his home......so as soon as we reached Le shan we found a room for us at the cost of 90 yuans (6yuans=1$) a night, had our dinner (before which i didn't forget to shit) and went off to sleep.

we woke up early in the morning, the weather was cold, but we some how got ready, so that we look at least presentable to the chinese family with whom we were going to stay.........Mark was one hour late, but that was nothing compared to what he had in store for us. he told us that his friend had a terrible accident and was admitted in a hospital in a different city and he will have to rush there, so we will have to stay in the Hotel and go around Le shan on our own.

just imagine, a new country, a new city, a still hardly understable language, how were we supposed to go places on our own??????i mean no one there speaks english, the only mode of communication is either chinese, or the alternative is what we applied........sign language.

i don't blame Mark, but i won't deny i wanted to shoot him at that moment, i was so angry with him, but as Ripu asked me to control, i behaved myself. Mark took us to the entrance of the Giant Buddha, helped us to buy our tickets and then bid farewell to us and left.

well we didn't let this incidence spoil our vacation though. we were determined to make use of our time and money, so we entered through the gate..........although we were a little upset at first, the place cheered us up. it is located at the top of a hill and had many magnificent things starting from the Dragon Pool with colourful fishes, to the artificial as well as natural waterfalls.
but the statue of the Buddha out shines everything which ornament the place.


Leshan Giant Buddha is an enormous statue carved into the cliff side of Lingyun Mountain. The Buddha is over 71 meters (230ft) tall with 28 meter (92ft) wide shoulders and a 15 meter (49ft) high head. More than 100 people can sit between the Buddha feet.


The carving of this massive statue commenced in 713AD during the Tang dynasty and was only completed in 803AD. The Buddha overlooks the confluence of the Min, Qingyi and Dadu rivers just east of Leshan and is reputed to be the largest carved stone Buddha in the world. A local saying explains, "The mountain is a Buddha, the Buddha is a mountain".

Standing in front of the Giant Buddha, we were awe struck by the unrivalled audacity of the ancient sculptors. to the right of the Buddha is the "Nine Turn Plank Walkway" which is made up of 250 narrow steps moving downwards. as we moved down these steps, at one point of time i thought that i will surely fall down and that would be my end, it was the first time i realized that i was afraid of heights; well any normal human being would feel the same in my situation.

but once i got to the bottom, i felt like all the trouble is worth it. i was so amazed that i could hardly do anything other than taking photographs.




if any of you come to China someday, the Le shan Giant Buddha is a must watch for you.


beside taking about a thousand photos, i bought a lot of presents for my friends and thus began my trip to bankrupcy. silk umbrellas for the girls, and laughing Buddha for the boys.........and for myself???????absolutely nothing!!!!well it's no fun to buy things for myself, but its a pleasure to buy for all.





after this, we returned back to our Hotel room by taking a cab, at first i thought maybe the driver will take us to an unknown part of the city because of the way we spelt the name of the place, but fortunately he took us to the right destination.



the next day was Ripu's 21st Birthday. imagine being stuck in an unknown place on such an important day!!!!! that afternoon when Ripu was asleep, i went to the reception of the hotel and asked her where i could find a birthday cake (in chinese ofcourse) and she gladly directed me the way. i bought a birthday cake, a bottle of coke, two glasses and two balloons and hid them in the cupboard. Ripu didn't notice anything because he was busy snoring, as usual. when he woke up, i understood that he was not feeling great being stuck in Le shan, so we decided we will return back the next day, that is, on his birthday. so we went to the Bus Station to buy our return tickets, but the counter was closed. a person told us that we can get tickets in the morning while taking the bus itself, so we didn't take much tension. since we were hungry we went to Dicos to eat our all time favourite "chicken burger".

in the mean time when Ripu was not noticing, i called Sandy and we planned to throw Ripu a surprise birthday party when we return to Luzhou. that night, although i was feeling very sleepy
i kept myself awake. every other minute i was checking out the watch, and this made Ripu suspicious. but he could never guess what was waiting for him in the cupboard.


as soon as it struck 12:00 i started singing Birthday wishes to him( although i can't sing) and i presented the birthday cake in front of him and hit him on the head with the balloons. he was so happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i made him cut the cake and open the coke just like opening a champagne bottle and we had a party of our own. although it was not much, we had a great time.



the next morning i don't know why nature was angry with me again. well what i mean is that i had a loose motion and to top that, we didn't get a reservation till that afternoon. i wish no human being should celebrate his birthday in the way Ripu did. stuck with me in Leshan all day long, most of the time sitting alone when i was busy lowering the pressure in my stomach. at last we got the bus at 1:00pm and set of for Luzhou. on the bus we had to unwillingly watch few chinese movies and wait to get back to our sweet Luzhou.

when we finally came back, everything was ready for Ripu, his birthday cake, the room was decorated, i mean everything was simply great. Ripu and me went to invite few of our seniors and very close friends.......Tanya, Mark, Reuel, Helbert, Lahun, Mount, Ban, Sweta, Paltrow, Suchi and others. that evening we had a great birthday party being celebrated in our dormitory.


later Ripu took Sandy, Rana, Sanjeet, Nihaal and me to St Marlow's, an italian restuarant for a special treat.
oh, i never would have guessed that the day which started with being stuck in the lavatory in Le shan would have such a satisfactory ending. thus i got no better title than "Blessing of the Buddha" for my today's post.

in the next post comes few more travel experiences around China..........so till then ........good bye.