Tuesday 28 October 2025
Today we headed south towards the Qilian Mountains to the site of Mati Si (temple), a place of worship spread along many kilometres. I loved the Buddhist prayer flag entrance, it reminded me of Nepal.
We started at the main temple area, which JC had last seen in the snow during his visit in October 2012, and I was secretly happy wasn't so cold, as there was less chance my fingers would freeze.
The main draw of the 30 or so grottos in the Northern Temple Grottos is the ‘thirty three heavens’ grotto. It is carved in the shape of a pagoda and rises over 40 m. It has 7 levels which are connected by internal rock hewn passages scaling the rock face. We passed boxes of 'flaming jewel brand prayer oil' stashed ready to go.
It was quite intriguing - and not to say a masterpiece of engineering to build in the 15th Century. Of course, we went in to explore. The passages were small and dark, so pleasantly undeveloped, but by halfway up I was finding it claustrophobic and vertiginous. My brain was telling me standing on an ancient balcony halfway up a cliff face wasn’t sensible.
I ploughed on and got to the top: I’m not one to admit defeat when I challenge myself but I'm not putting that in my top-ten things to repeat. JC looks like he's on a walk to Sainsbury's.
Cangfo Temple had an 8 m high Buddha and, at 41 x 28 m, makes it ones of the largest Buddhist caves in China (so the sign said).
Tour groups were making a beeline for the Mati Hall so I peered in to see the lure. It turned out to be a horseshoe shaped hoof print allegedly left by a heavenly horse. It is now a popular attraction so I dutifully took a photo of the hoof print.
I was feeling a bit grotto’ed out (again) and needed a walk. To our delight, there were paths all over the place so we did a short circuit to see the sword-cut stone. According to legend, this stone was split during a martial art competition between King Gesar of Tibet and a neighbouring country. Nowadays, it is said that anyone who can pass through the stone will enjoy great fortune and have their wishes fulfilled. I don't even think my foot would have passed through it.
It was refreshing walking in the shadow of the Qilian Mountains.
We were 2700 m high and had fancied an 8 km loop to see a waterfall until we noticed said waterfall was at 4100 m! It wasn't insurmountable, but we only had 2 spare hours so we took a lower trail. Our path took us across a mountain stream which was beautifully iced up.
A few km later we arrived at the hall of the aforementioned King Gesar.
The cave is 33 m long and contained a bizarre (to us) collection of clay horses. They depict a scene of the king riding his stead being bid farewell by his queen.
Our next stop was Thousand Buddha Cave Grottos where I found another bridge to be photographed on.
The older caves were closed, but the middle cave section was open. Again, some of these caves were connected by internal passageways and we climbed up a super precarious ladder/plank contraption to reach a dark stone set of steps with handholds notched into the rock. It led to the medicine man's cave (circled below). Not something that would been open to the public in the UK!
Finally, we passed the cliff carved stupa forest. These amazingly carved stupa were everywhere and of typical Tibetan Buddhist style.
Back at the hotel, room service had today left is a plate of mandolinned cucumber to use as a face mask, some detergent and two small packets of crab flavoured seeds.
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