A trip to Leshan Giant Buddha

I often get inspired to visit new places to visit simply after having seen a photo of this place. I see it on the photo and I absolutely want to see it with my own eyes it one day. That was the case of the Leshan Giant Buddha whom I so much liked on the photo, that I wanted to see it for real.

This UNESCO World Heritage Site is the largest and tallest stone Buddha in the world. It is 71 meters high and has 8,3 meter long fingers! The construction of the Buddha was initiated by a Chinese monk names Hai Tong. He hoped that the Buddha would calm the turbulent waters, which were making many boats and ships crash. Begun in the year 713 in the Tang Dynasty and finished in the year 803, the statue took people more than 90 years to carve.

And indeed while planning the trip in China I took it into consideration while planning the itinerary. Leshan is easily reachable from Chengdu - the train takes around 1h to get there. Although we left in the morning, when we arrived to the Buddha in the late morning, the place was very crowded. After a climb up the back of the rock, we reached a place from which we could admire Buddha from above - we were next to his head. However if we wanted to see Buddha from the level of his feet, we had to join a huge number of people queuing to go down to the ground level. Well, it was the only way to see it (other than doing it by boat), so we didn't have a choice. We waited like 2h, but finally started to descent. It wasn't the most pleasant and comfortable way to visit with hundreds of people around, but when we finally reached the bottom it was really a great view!

 

Although the waiting time and the descent were a bit discouraging, the fact that we could admire Buddha in all its splendor easily paid back all this effort. It was simply spectacular!

 

While surrounding the rock on the way back, we noticed another attraction called Oriental Buddha Capital. Although the entrance was not very cheap, I thought that since I'd most probably never come back here, I'll check out this place. This site was a very large park with hundreds if not thousands statues of Buddha carved in the rocks. This place was very new (created in 90s), but I really liked it. Buddhas were of different sizes - like for instance a giant face of Buddha carved out of a mountain (33 meters high).