We all woke up and met at 530am to begin our journey. Even though it was so early, the roads were extremely busy and trying to pay attention to so many cars and other bikers at the same time was a new experience for me. On our bike ride we went through the outskirts of Beijing. This part of the city was vastly different than what we had been used to. At one point, we stopped in a local street market to get some breakfast and we could all tell by the looks that we received that most of the people there had never seen a foreigner before. It's times like this I wish I knew more Chinese so I could fully understand what people were saying about us. It took us about 2.5 hours to bike to the park where the mountain was. The road up to the park was basically empty except for a few fruit stands. It was refreshing to finally be away from the dense city.
Once we finally reached the base of the mountain, we paid our fee to enter and came up with creative ways to lock our bikes together so that they wouldn't get stolen. After looking at the park map we decided the best course of action was to try to climb the smaller mountain since it also had a natural spring on its path. The trail to the mountain was pretty well paved and just consisted of a bunch of rocks formed into steps. The trail was completely empty until later in the day when we got closer to the top. The natural spring was very interesting. Apparently people come from all over Beijing to collect water from it and bring it back with them. I was extremely impressed with how nice and cool the water was. The runoff of the spring water, however, was not very nice and was extremely polluted. It probably took us about 3 hours to reach the top. The trail was very indirect and had many flatter areas that circled around the mountain. At the top there was a paved road and more paths that led to other mountains and temples. It was extremely smoggy the entire day so we were unable to see anything when we reached the top.
The hike down was extremely hard on my knees and we were all dreading the 15 mile bike ride back to campus. On the bike ride back we got to experience what it was like biking in rush hour traffic. It was extremely intense with cars driving in the bike lane and little space for us to go anywhere. By the time we made it back to campus it was already 6pm. We grabbed some dinner at one of our favorite local places and then headed back to the dorm to shower and relax. By about 730 we all had passed out from exhaustion. I'll post the picture I took tomorrow after class but most of them are just smoggy outlines of mountains. This trip was the most enjoyable one so far and it was extremely nice getting to be away from the crowded and noisy city.
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