1000 Buddha Jeep Excursion

About 3 weeks ago (Sept 7, 2013) we went with some of our new friends here in Xi'an on a 1000 Buddha Jeep Excursion!  Eight of us in three jeeps spent an entire day from early morning until late at night on a fabulous adventure!  Below is the link to our host guide's website and an excerpt from Jordan's journal. Pictures to follow!

Explore Xian's surroundings by vintage convertible jeep: www.xianinsiders.com

     Yesterday we took a trip outside of Xi’an.  We really enjoyed ourselves.  There were 8 of us and we were picked up in jeeps.  We stopped first to see pandas and monkeys at a preserve, then went to this old textile plant that artists have turned into an art location and the city has now made it an official art gallery.  The pandas simply lay out on rocks and look like black and white throw rugs.  We actually enjoyed the monkeys more.  They were reddish gold color and just beautiful creatures.  They would come over to the edge of the cage and stare as if they didn't care whether you were there or not and then do a back flip away.  Next to the art area, the pandas were the biggest yawn of the trip.
     The jeeps were getting hot so we had them pull the top covers off and headed off in open jeeps.  We headed up into the hills by the mountains.  These mountains stretch the entire width, west to east, of China and on the west are extensions of the Himalayas, and then run non-stop to the sea.  They separate China’s climate into north and south.  On the south they grow rice because of the humid and hot weather.  On the north they grow wheat and corn because it is drier and more temperate.  Xi’an is situated on the northern edge of the mountains and east of the Gobi desert.  Because we are up against the mountains and just off the desert we are a sink hole for everything that blows or is sent up in the air from all around.  Therefore, we are constantly under a layer of dust/sand blowing off the desert and stopping at the mountains.  I suppose it makes the soil fertile, but that, combined with the fact that China has chosen Xi’an to be a capital for coal fired electricity (huge plants belching out thick acid smoke everywhere), makes it so we hardly ever see the sky.  Our guide humorously mentioned he goes through shirts constantly because of the coal smog eating away the shirts.  Even as we climbed up to the high plateau by the mountains it was still hazy.
     It was so interesting once we got up on the plateau.  We first went along what we considered to be tiny roads up among small villages.  I say we thought they were tiny because as the day wore on our “roads” became small foot trails through corn fields.  How our guide found all these roads (she was constantly on her GPS) was amazing to us.  Good thing we had 4-wheel jeeps, as many times the roads were impassable except for 4-wheeling it.  We stopped at this tiny way-out-of-the-way-someone’s-tiny-farm place for lunch.  They brought the pheasant to the courtyard we were waiting for lunch, killed it and then started fixing our lunch while we waited about 90 minutes for them to do it.  The trail leading to the location was small and hugged the side of a drop-off.  Our native drivers had no problem heading down, but the US guide driving the 3^rd jeep chickened out and parked up the dirt road and made those in his jeep walk the rest of the way.  We were in the lead jeep with a native.  As we were trying to turn the hair-pin turn from the main “road” onto the trail a small van was blocking the way.  Our driver yelled at them to move but they weren't too anxious to do so.  I think the driver didn’t know how to use a clutch and was afraid to drive away from where he was stopped for fear of gliding backwards and down the mountain drop-off.  Finally in exasperation in order to avoid moving, the passenger yelled back “Don't go down there!  It’s no fun down there anyway.”  Really?  They did finally move and we understood why they hadn't wanted to (could not drive a clutch).  
     After lunch we drove through lots of small villages and out to the foot of the mountains (they rose up 10-11,000 feet in front of us) and we saw a Buddhist temple of 1000 Buddhas that survived the cultural revolution.  Apparently the priest told the red guard that there was nothing in these shrines so the red guard only destroyed everything else around it. These statues and paintings are centuries old. 
     From the Buddha place we went through many small villages, jeeping right up through their street markets.  Sometimes I wondered how we were even going to get past the street vendors.  We stopped in one village and took pictures of an old man planting garlic for the winter.  Garlic, ginger and something else is used in the winter to survive.  All the local boys came to have their picture taken by us as they really haven’t seen weiguo ren (foreigners) before.  From there we continued weaving around homes and corn fields and I was completely amazed each time we would take another turn.  
     Finally we started down this footpath heading down hill.  People were picking berries that grew along the path by the corn fields and had to jump out of the way.  We stopped at a place to go see cave dwellings.  Around Xi’an, and I understand in many other places of China, the poor people would dig deep caves into the sides of the mountains and hills and then put masonry walls and doors on the entrances.  They would then live there for generations.  Their beds were slabs on top of a fire pit so in the winter they would start a fire in the pit and it would warm their beds.  As we stopped along the path, a small old man was climbing up the hill.  He had a post across his shoulders and on each end of the post was a bucket full of water.  The bucket was the same size we would think of in the states.  This was his source of water for drinking, cleaning and watering his plants.  It turns out that this was the man we were there to visit.  He invited us into the courtyard in front of his “house” (in China homes have courtyards which you enter to access the various “homes” that make up the sides of the courtyard), and as we entered we saw his cave dwelling.  He was 80 years old and spoke a dialect that even our foreigner translators had a difficult time understanding.  He then retreated to his cave dwelling, brought out a small cell phone and excitedly called a buddy of his to come over, and together they entertained us and took pictures with us.  He allowed us to go inside his house and take pictures.  It was truly remarkable.  We stayed a good 45 minutes at his house then left and went back home.  Great day.