Little Butterfly : It's a Climb

"Determination is when you know you cannot do something but you have the will to try anyway"

What a day with absolutely fantastic people. I went hiking with 2 friends, Beca and Andy, today at Manisan mountain in Ganghwa. The scenery was absolutely breathtaking and being out and about after such a war scare was just what I needed. Firstly, I must say thanks to Beca who organised this whole trip. She went all out studying up the area and the linguistics. The linguistics was a little bit of an issue but nothing we couldn't figure out.

We caught the 7am train from Uijeongbu to City Hall where we transferred to the green line to go to Sinchon. At Sinchon station we had to catch the bus to Ganghwa. We had two bus options, 3100 and 3000, 3100 goes directly to the foot of the mountain according to all the blogs and Korea Tourism. When we got to the bus stops we searched for the 3100 bus which was nowhere to be found. Just our luck. After searching for about 15 min and missing a few 3000 busses I realised that the 3100 bus schedule was covered by a big 3000 bus schedule sticker. No wonder we couldn't find the bus. The 3100 bus doesn't exist anymore. It was quite irritating that even the Korea Tourism website was outdated and said otherwise. We got onto the 3000 bus and off we went to Ganghwa. The only problem was that this bus wouldn't take us to the foot of the mountain. We had to transfer to another bus at Ganghwa bus terminal (bus 41) to take us to the foot of the mountain. Surprisingly, we actually arrived earlier than expected.

Tip #: Make sure you give yourself enough time for errors to occur and always have a cool mindset about organising things especially if you are in a country where you don't understand the language.

And off we went to climb the mountain (Or in my opinion, hill. Leeukop is about the height of this mountain.). We started on a tar road that took us to the spot where the hiking trail started. Interesting enough a church was built next to the spot where the hiking trail started, normally you'll only see temples at the foot of mountains. Reason being dates back to the time of Joseon Dynasty Confucianism where anti-buddhist sentiments grew because of corruption amongst the monks. Most Buddhist temples were then built in the mountains where it was hard to reach and could not be spotted. The church also played One Direction which I found quite weird and funny.

About halfway up the first part of the mountain we stopped and sat down for a rest. At some stage on our way up I turned around and saw the most picture perfect spectacular view. Something quite unique in Korea actually, according to me anyway. Right there and then I learned a valuable life lesson. Sometimes in life we are so focused on moving forward and concentrate so much on the future that we miss the beauty of now and sometimes even the past. If I didn't turn around at that specific point I wouldn't have seen the beauty of the landscapes in the valley.

After having some water and some snacks we continued to hike up. 496,4 meters above sea level later we reached the highest point and most sacred point, Chamseong-dan Altar. To me it looked like the staircase to heaven. This area is also called the " Devil expelling Mountain" and is quite famous throughout the nation. The whole Island of Ganghwa is actually quite rich in its history and can be read about in the link (Ganghwa). Very close to this site there was also a helipad for emergencies which I thought at first was stupid but after climbing the mountain and I realise why it's there. It got pretty rough after the relatively easy route up.

This is definitely no mountain to climb for people who has Acrophobia (fear of heights). The terrain got extremely risky at some point. I'm not afraid of heights and to be honest I love climbing up and down things like a monkey or swinging in trees like Tarzan but at one point things got a little scary. Using all 4 limbs we climbed the whole ridge of the mountain. At first there is ropes you could grab onto but then after a little while the ropes disappear and so does the path. We figured going over the big rocks was better than going around them since there is a drop on both sides of the ridge. At some places you have to slide down the rocks, at others you have to jump and hope you don't lose your balance and at some places you have to climb and really use your upper body strength.

At the end we made it down to the mountain and went to one of the temples to wait for our friend who had to turn around because of the heights. But of course there is not only one temple in the mountain and we ended up at different temples. The temple names basically differed with a single letter and since neither of us spoke Korean that was a mistake anyone could have made. We took some photos and headed back to the bus terminal to meet up again and headed back home.

It was a day well spent.