One of the oldest activities in Buseok is mountain climbing. Before they had cars and decent roads, the only way to get anywhere was to climb over at least a few mountains. Luckily, we have cars and roads now. I used to be pretty good at hiking. Maybe I spend too much time living my city lifestyle, or I'm just getting old. But these days, climbing a whole mountain would definitely not be fun for me.
We drove out to Sobeksan (Sobek Mountain) and started a climb that we were told was "for beginners". It was really boring - just a concrete paved path for the first couple kilometers. We quit, and went back to the car.
I was glad that we did, because it was much more fun to climb the route we took instead. We started at Huibangsa (Huibang Temple) and spent some time meditating (recovering from our previous hike) here.
Korea is famous for its temples. People come from all over the world to study under masters here. I think it's really because the surrounding mountains are so isolated and beautiful. Just about every temple is almost completely secluded from civilization. Some are in the city, and I hope to visit these soon for contrast.
Every temple has hand painted and ornate woodwork around the eaves. They each tell different stories of enlightenment from Buddha's teachings. Some are overwhelming, some are understated. Huibangsa is fairly typical, but had some beautiful features. I actually liked that they had this kinda mysterious chant playing throughout the temple grounds. It was almost cliched, but I still was digging the musical qualities. Reminded me of Sunn O))) without the distorted doom guitars.
Temples always have a main room with at least one statue of Buddha plated in gold. This room also houses treasures and other significant artifacts. Huibangsa had a 500 year old bell that was ornately forged with meditative poems and other intricacies.
This is the new bell that replaced the old one. It's much larger, and would probably be heard for many miles. The chant that was played from the main room could be heard almost all the way up the mountain. I can only imagine how far this bell's sound could travel.
I always have to remind myself of this when I see the swastika emblazoned around the temples: the nazis stole it. Buddhists had it first. That said, come on Buddhists, can't you find something more interesting to splay across your bridge?
We began our climb pretty nicely. An easy walk across the bridge, to find a lovely stream.
Ordinarily, I'm not a big nature freak. I'm not too fond of bugs and plants and other stuff that I might be allergic to. The mountains provide a totally different experience from the prairies of the Midwest.
We climbed some stairs (they seem to put these stairs in everywhere that the climb would get too tough on the terrain) and we found a lovely waterfall to match the lovely stream.
Then the climb got a little rougher. They were nice enough to provide a hand rail, but my knees were still complaining. After completing this course, we wondered if we should go for the peak.
We found this sign and decided to press on. I only now realize that this is still almost a mile to go. It's a good thing I didn't know that then - I might have given up.
We knew we were near the peak when the view started to get amazing. I felt the need to push on despite the complaints from my body. It's really exhilarating to know you're just that close to acheiving what people have died trying to do. Granted, the weather was nice and we were climbing stairs with rails half the time, but still...
The top of the mountain was totally worth it. The way down was a breeze. I think I was high on the adrenaline of making it to the top. We passed everyone we saw coming down on our way up. I felt like a mountain goat.
We got some awesome Makgeolri (pronounced like mahk-kuhl-ree) in Danyang on the way back. First of all, this stuff is about as alcoholic as soju, the Korean distilled rice wine (at most 20%). But it tastes like rice milk, which is much smoother than soju. This is the farmer's liquor of Korea, because it's not distilled much at all. It's basically just rice fermented with some malt for a month. So because it's such a simple process, you pretty much have to get this stuff fresh from a producer. It doesn't keep much more than a few weeks. If you go to a supermarket and buy it, it's really not very good. That stuff gets sour quickly. This place in Danyang is famous for producing the local variation. This is where the president gets his booze. The bottles proudly display that the grains are harvested from Sobeksan.
Another interesting note, the place that we bought the makgeolri from was really just a little store in the tiny town of Danyang. This place ships their product all over Korea. This is all fresh and handmade - the factory is right behind the store. They're quite famous, but you wouldn't know it from the looks of it. They use the store like a warehouse - messy . There was one lady working the store that spent the entire time on the phone taking orders. She was so busy, we had a hard time just to pay. When we got the price, I couldn't believe it. We paid about $20 for like 9 bottles. In the US, a place like this would have cashed in long ago, jacked up the prices, hired a staff, moved to a city, etc. Not this place, it's been run by the same family for 120 years. And it's a shack, but the product is still high quality.
So not only did we get to climb Sobek mountain, we also got to see my mother-in-law get drunk from its fruit.
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