Mount Palgongsan Natural Area

     

When we decided to move to Korea we were very excited about the chance to see ancient temples, colorful, old asian buildings tucked into small flat spots high up in the mountains with grand vistas. Long before coming to Korea, or even meeting Carolyn, I dreamed of hiking in Nepal and Tibet, encountering Buddhist monks in their element, and smelling the sandalwood incense burning in their temples. Last weekend’s adventure at the Daegu arboretum made us think we should try and venture a little bit farther out of town this week. We took the subway from Daegok station to Dongdaegu station and found the Daegu City Tour, a bus trip with on-off privileges that goes to some of the main sites in the Mt. Palgongsan Natural Area.

About 45 minutes by bus later, we found ourselves at Gatbawi, a site with a temple and a giant Buddha. The brochure for the tour said that we would have about a 2 hour round trip hike. We figured this would be easy enough to do and still make it to our prime directive, Donghwasa Temple. As we started the hike we noticed that the trail was fairly steep. About 45 minutes later we found ourselves outside of an operational Buddhist temple. Other hikers were doing their prostrations in front of the statues of Buddha, and beautifully carved dragons adorned the many buildings of the complex. I was particularly excited to see a funeral bell for the first time, and all of the lanterns had prayer cards hanging from them. It was absolutely stunning.  I felt a bit like I imagined Nate Drake would have felt as he entered the Tibetan village that was being ravaged by Lazarovic’s troops in Uncharted 2…well…without Lazorovic’s troops and stuff. We continued towards the giant Buddha for a bit, but realized we would need to summit the mountain to find him. A quick look at the verticality and distance of the  remaining part of the climb, and the remaining time before the last bus we could catch, and we decided to head back down the mountain. It was a gorgeous climb, and we will go back and finish climbing the mountain soon.

Gwanan Temple

Gwanan Temple

Dragon at Gwanan Temple

Carolyn at Gwanan Temple

Funeral Bell at Gwanan Temple

Donghwasa Temple

Dongwhasa Temple

Donghwasa Temple

Donghwasa Temple

After we got back to the base of the mountain we hopped on the tour bus and rode over to Dongwhasa temple. This temple is famous because it has the largest Buddha in all of Korea, or so we heard. The temple was absolutely beautiful, and I once again thought about how much I felt like I was “living the dream” of trekking through Nepal and Tibet, even though I am far from those places. Obviously the mountains here don’t look anything like the Himalayas, but it’s still surreal to be immersed in something as exotic as a Buddhist temple and monastery on a day trip. That’s going to take some getting used to.

We both felt great after such an awesome day out sightseeing. How cool is it to go out and see stuff like this? It’s FREAKING AWESOME. Anyway, that’s about it for now. We have TV shows to download, photos to post, and all sorts of other internets business to attend to.