It was super-humid and the sun was burning. I was drenched. After about an hour of steep hiking up a narrow trial I made it to the ridge line of the mountain where I could view 3 mountain valleys all at once. I love looking down on these terrace farms.
The little modest temple at the top is inhabitated by a small family who greet hikers all day and allow them to sit inside their chamber to cool down. They were quite interested me as few to no foreigners make it to these temple sites. All of the tourists are Chinese, mostly those from nearby Huangmei. The inhabitants, spoke little Official Beijing (Putonghua) Mandarin, but rather a indecipherable (to me) dialect of Huangmeihua.
The terrible catch to this beautiful and exhilirating morning was that as soon as I was already planning my next hike back up here and some other mountains, my trip took a turn for the worse. I slipped coming down off a gravelly steep part of the trail landing hard on my left ankle twsiting and popping it. I have sprained this damned ankle 3 times now. I know that my left leg is slightly weaker than my right. I have less flexibility on the left, so I am imbalanced and thus favor clumsiness toward the left side of my body. Maybe this is some reasoning. This time it was incrediblely painful and scary. I sat their in the dirt a little nauseous and wobbly for a while, plus I had the lone descent of most the mountain below me! Argh...Really Sucked!!!!I slowly made it back down feeling extremely dissapointed for the rest of my trip here in the mountains.