Chengdu - Wenshu Monastery

Thursday 30 October 2025

We spent our last couple of days in Chengdu, as we were flying directly from there back to London on the Saturday.  We caught an early Didi to Lanzhou airport, capturing glimpses of the Yellow River as we went, and sailed through departures like royalty.  There were numerous staff who were keen to walk us through every stage.

Like Lanzhou, Chengdu is a large metropolis and it took us 1.5 hours via fast/slow metro lines to reach our hotel.  Unlike Lanzhou, and every other place we'd stayed this trip, the skies were grey and it was drizzly.  Blimey!  We had to dig out the gortex coats which hadn't seen an airing since the UK.  

We stayed in the same place JC slept ~10 years ago near the Wenshu Buddhist Monastery.  It was a beautiful old building and by far the oldest and authentic accommodation we’d stayed in during our whole trip [there was super little choice when booking hotels in western China from UK].

We visited the neighbouring Wenshu Buddhist Monastery, which is still inhabited by monks.  Worshipers were circling the pagoda as we passed.

This was the main prayer hall, on a Thursday afternoon.  NB - we popped in Saturday morning just before we left - the queues!

I do love a Chinese roof.

The monastery had a lovely tea garden.  The loose tea was put into the cup and you used the porcelain lid as a strainer when you drank.  There was a knack to it, but it was easy to pick up. 

Then I wanted to find a river so we walked to the local one.  Sadly it wasn’t terribly exciting so we did a large loop back to our hotel.  It was nice to get some km under our feet though and I found a cute caterpillar.  

I had definitely run out of steam by this stage - not for today, but for the holiday.  The impending re-entry to the UK was playing on my mind as I’d been watching things stack up in the inbox awaiting my action on return (and this was just my personal email).  We were meant to be going to see the largest old Buddha in the world tomorrow, but I cancelled our planned trip.  Although it sounded magnificent, it involved over 2 hours travel each way plus hours of queuing and fighting crowds - quite simply not the end I needed for the trip. 

We dined out locally in a smoky restaurant - smoking in food establishments is quite the norm here - then headed for some much needed rest.