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Description

The elegant main pavilion at Fuhusi (Tiger Taming Monastery), backed by the misty slopes of the holy mountain of Emei Shan.

Day 116 - Wednesday 20 May

- Emei Shan

I hardly got any sleep during the night on the train and by five-thirty I was wide awake. It began to get light soon after that, although the hills and mountains were cloaked in mist and it was not possible to see very much other than the rivers that we passed over or alongside. I had no real idea where we were, only that we were generally travelling northwards, which I guessed initially from it being a shade lighter on the right side of the train and which I then confirmed with my compass. Unless we had lost a lot of time during the night we must therefore have been on the final leg of my journey to Emei. This thought was supported by our passing a huge river full of logs on our right, which I figured had to be the Dadu He, followed by a descent to a plain.

At a quarter to seven we arrived at a station where a large number of people seemed to be getting off. I could not see the name of the station anywhere so I asked one of my neighbours if this was Emei. He said not, but shortly after resuming he said something to me and then began preparing to leave the train. This time we were approaching Emei. The train stopped at Emei station at five past seven and I brusquely battled my way off before the throngs of new passengers could get on. I had barely set foot on the platform before I was accosted by a tout for a minibus to Baoguo. He also wanted to know if I wished to take a bus up the mountain. I told him that I was going to walk, not that I planned to go any further today other than finding a bed for the night in Baoguo. His price for the minibus started at three kuai, came down to two kuai before I’d even had a chance to begin haggling, and he settled on my very first offer of one kuai!

Very soon we were underway on our short ride through the miserable looking town of Emei to the village of Baoguo at the foot of Emei Shan. Upon leaving the bus I began to walk up the hill through the village, running the gauntlet of restaurants, souvenir stalls and old grannies selling maps of the sacred mountain, looking for the Hongzhushan Binguan. After twice being directed to the wrong place I arrived at a rather smart reception area to find a young man who spoke moderately good English. When I asked him for the cheapest room he rifled through sheets of papers before coming up with the outrageous price of twenty kuai for a bed in a dormitory. I expressed my surprise in the politest possible manner and he promptly reduced the asking price to seventeen; or so I thought. It was still ridiculously expensive but, after a sleepless night on the train, I just wanted to get some sleep in a bed for a few hours so I said that I would take it. I began to fill out the registration form, and whilst doing so the guy said I think you would be more comfortable in a ninety yuan room, with colour TV, video and bathroom. I assured him that a dormitory would be perfectly adequate for my simple needs and handed over a RMB20 note. Sorry sir, we can only take FEC he said apologetically. Of course, I replied, how stupid of me! I never really thought I’d get away with it in such a major tourist destination, but it was worth a try, having paid in RMB in Lijiang nearly all the time. But when I put the exact amount of FEC17 down on the counter the entire transaction fell apart. He told me that the room was seventy kuai! What? I exploded, seventy kuai for a dormitory. You have got to be joking! But he was not joking, even though he had definitely started off at twenty; I could not possibly have misheard that. I pointed this out to him but he was adamant. This is outrageous! I responded, there is no way you can charge seventy kuai for a dormitory. He assured me that he could, saying that this was normal everywhere. When I pointed out to him that dormitories in Kunming, Dali and Lijiang ranged from six to ten kuai he practically accused me of being a liar. My final attempt to reason with him was a lie, telling him that I had actually stayed at this very hotel two years ago when the price for a dormitory was only fifteen kuai, which was in reality the price quoted in the current edition of Lonely Planet. Yet again he told me I was wrong. I could contain my temper no longer. I screwed up my partially completed registration form, threw it at him, gave him a few succinct expletives in English and walked out, still absolutely fuming.

I strolled slowly back down the road, taking the time to calm myself, and then tried the hotel at the junction with the main road. They asked for a hundred kuai initially but immediately dropped the price to sixty on seeing my look of total disbelief. At least this was for a private room and not in a dormitory, but there was no way that I was going to pay that sort of price for accommodation. I had read that prices at Emei Shan were an incredible rip-off, boosted by the overseas Chinese tourists who visit in their droves and who were apparently prepared to pay virtually any price that was asked of them. If that was the case then they had certainly ruined it for the rest of us.

I now had no option, it seemed, but to try my luck at Baoguosi, the first of the eight monastic guest houses on Emei Shan. Finding the place was easy enough, but finding where I could book a room was considerably more difficult, and I still had to pay the one kuai monastery entrance fee. When I eventually found the correct place a young monk who spoke some English attended to me, relieving me of ten kuai in exchange for a double room and five mao for a ticket for the shower tonight. When I asked him if I could store my luggage here whilst I climbed the mountain he said that he was afraid not. Later on I debated with the idea of renting the room for another two nights and then keeping the gear that I didn’t want to take with me on the climb locked in the room because, unusually for China, I had been given a key to the padlocked door of the room, for a refundable five kuai deposit. I had yet to ask if this were possible, but I couldn’t see why not. For the price of ten kuai the room wasn’t bad. Only one of the beds had bedclothes, but then I only needed one bed in any case. The bed was not too hard and would hopefully be warm enough, despite the evident dampness in the air. My first task once in the room was to take out my laundry from Lijiang and hang it up to air, for some of it was still slightly damp. This done I went out again to find some breakfast.

The monastery restaurant was closed and so I went to one of the local establishments nearby, where I had two steamed buns with vegetable filling, two long, thin pastries, a bowl of rice gruel, which I hadn’t asked for, and a large steaming mug of fresh jasmine tea. Apart from the gruel the food was very good and cost a reasonable four kuai. To buy the new toilet roll that I was in need of I had to walk further down the hill into the village. That done I returned to the monastery, this time flashing the receipt for my room at the entrance so that I didn’t have to pay again. I had a much-needed crap and then sat down on the bed to write my diary, finishing off yesterday’s entry and bringing a close to Volume III before making a start on the events of today in a pristine new notebook. After I had finished, rather than taking a nap as I had originally intended, I decided to go out and explore two of Emei Shan’s major monasteries; Baoguosi, where I was staying, and Fuhusi, about a kilometre along the road from here. Before that, however, I had lunch in the monastery restaurant which was now open. Although the restaurant fare was all supposedly vegetarian I chose a dish of peas and chicken hash, along with a bowl of steamed rice. The chicken in the hash seemed to consist of small slivers of crispy chicken skin and fat, and the peas were of the processed cannonball variety from my school dinner era. Despite that it was very tasty and filling, and the price was only three kuai.

After eating I set out on my exploration of Baoguosi, the largest of the monasteries on Emei Shan. Much of it was quite old, with its origins in the sixteenth century, although it had since been much restored. When I had first arrived this morning it had been seething with visitors, but it was now pleasantly quiet, with most of those early morning visitors presumably now having ascended further up the mountain. Some of its statuary was both large and impressive and very colourful. Unfortunately it was also nearly all enclosed behind large glass panels, making flash photography pretty much a waste of time, and it was far too dark for shots utilising natural light without a tripod. I took a photograph of a giant bronze incense burner in an exterior courtyard and then a couple of some of the detail of an interesting terracotta relief panel, but was prevented from taking any more by a monk, being told that it was forbidden. I had just finished my tour and was about to leave when I was ambushed by a Chinese vision in a bright green jacket who wanted me to pose for some photographs with her, and then each of her five friends in turn, and finally all of us together. Most of these were taken by one of the many professional photographers that swarmed all over Baoguosi. Once they had finished I asked for the compliment to be returned, getting their professional to take one of all of us with my camera, for no extra charge! I was aware that the gorgeous woman who had approached me had most proprietarily put her hands on my shoulders as I squatted in front of them to ensure that my head wasn’t chopped off by their photographer, my being considerably taller than these Chinese. I also noticed that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but sadly we were destined never to meet again!

My explorations and encounters at Baoguosi now complete I went to enquire about the storage of my possessions before climbing the hill to Fuhusi. My proposal of renting the room for an extra couple of nights just for storage purposes was rejected, the same guy then adding that I could ask at one of the hotels. I was hardly going to return to either of the places I had rejected this morning and instead I went in search of the Xixiang Fandian, but nobody that I asked seemed to have heard of it. Eventually I returned to the monk at Baoguosi and asked him which hotel he thought I should use. He directed me to one on a little lane to the left of the monastery entrance. It was a dreary concrete hulk of a place where I certainly wouldn’t have entertained staying, but the girl that I spoke to at the reception desk had no objections to my keeping a bag there for a couple of days, for the rather steep price of four kuai. Having solved this problem at last I walked down the hill to a junction and then began the easy climb up the road to Fuhusi. It was still quite an overcast day but was now a lot warmer than it had been this morning, and even this gentle climb had me sweating inside my Berghaus jacket, although I didn’t want to take it off as it wasn’t quite warm enough for that.

Fuhusi (Tiger Taming Monastery) was set amidst the forested lower slopes of Emei Shan and, once I had left the road, involved climbing a short but meandering path through the trees and streams to the steps at the foot of the monastery. In terms of its buildings it was a little drab but it is located in a lovely setting with the misty slopes of the mountain behind, and the halls were again filled with colourful statues. Off to the left of the main halls, in a courtyard of its own, was an attractive wooden pavilion containing a seven metre tall, slender copper pagoda. Having completed my photography I once again became the target of the Chinese tourists in search of something a little more exotic in their own photographs of Fuhusi. I posed with various members of one group, sadly all male, before bidding them farewell, only to be accosted by another two guys at the steps leading to the first hall.

Leaving Fuhusi I made a half-hearted and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to find the path up to Leiyinsi, the next monastery along on this particular trail. I was not overly concerned that I didn’t find it because it did not even warrant a comment in either guide book. Instead I made my way back down past the enormous accommodation blocks attached to Fuhusi. Apparently they could house four hundred people and seat two hundred at a time in the restaurant. As I was passing I noticed a sign above a part of the complex with three Chinese characters and the Pinyin transliteration beneath them. I laughed aloud when I read the latter because it pronounced Gnij Ix Uh; they had written it all back to front and it should have been Hu Xi Jing! There was nothing further that I wanted to do today, so when I returned to my monk’s cell, a most luxurious one by Daoist monk standards it has to be said, I finally lay down for my long-awaited nap at four o’clock, setting my alarm for six-thirty to ensure that I was awake in time for the hot showers at seven o’clock.

At a quarter to seven, feeling considerably refreshed and restored after my nap, I went to investigate the whereabouts of the showers. They turned out to be a good distance away from my room, in the vicinity of the entrance. I returned to the room and stripped down to T-shirt and shorts and then went back again to the showers armed with my shampoo and towel. The water was just pleasantly hot and I had a long soak beneath the jets for about ten minutes before shampooing and rinsing. Back in the room I shaved, using one of the enamel bowls filled with hot water from the vacuum flask, dressed and then went to dinner.

The restaurant was already winding down its operations for the evening, most of the guests evidently having eaten before bathing, and I was only able get the remnants of the cabbage and cauliflower dishes, along with a large bowl of rice. The vegetables were practically stone cold and not terribly appetising. When I had finished my meagre repast I checked what time I needed to be back by, for the main gate was already firmly bolted and padlocked and I had to use a side entrance to get in and out. The man I spoke to said I should be back by nine o’clock, which gave me just under an hour. I wandered down into the village of Baoguo, where there was still plenty of activity. Virtually every restaurant that I passed wanted me to come in and eat, and many were the scene of some truly awful karaoke performances by Chinese tourists. I carried on to the end of the strip and then worked my way back again, stopping at the place where I’d had breakfast this morning for a beer, a local brew called, appropriately enough, Emeishan Pijiu.

When I returned to the monastery I found a group of ten to twelve monks, most of them dressed in long yellow robes, still chanting and playing a variety of musical instruments in the main hall as they had been earlier. At the head of the table and raised up above the others was the monk who I presumed must be the abbot. He too was dressed in yellow, was very old and sported a wonderful headdress in the style of a castellated crown, covered with red pompoms and tassels. It was similar to those that I had frequently seen at the photo booths in major tourist destinations, where you could dress up like a Ming dynasty emperor or similar for your portraits, but this particular example was clearly the genuine article. The music and the chanting were especially pleasing to the ear and, now that the crowds who had flocked around whilst I was having my dinner had gone, I was able to stand right in the entrance to watch and listen. I stayed until shortly after nine o’clock, but I could still hear them upon returning to my room, and the rituals continued until almost half past ten.
Back in my room I sorted out my gear into what I wanted to take with me in my daypack tomorrow and what I would leave at the hotel in my backpack. That done I sat down on the bed to finish off my diary entry for today before settling down at ten-forty, intent on a good night’s sleep prior to an early start tomorrow morning.

Description

The elegant main pavilion at Fuhusi (Tiger Taming Monastery), backed by the misty slopes of the holy mountain of Emei Shan.

Day 116 - Wednesday 20 May

- Emei Shan

I hardly got any sleep during the night on the train and by five-thirty I was wide awake. It began to get light soon after that, although the hills and mountains were cloaked in mist and it was not possible to see very much other than the rivers that we passed over or alongside. I had no real idea where we were, only that we were generally travelling northwards, which I guessed initially from it being a shade lighter on the right side of the train and which I then confirmed with my compass. Unless we had lost a lot of time during the night we must therefore have been on the final leg of my journey to Emei. This thought was supported by our passing a huge river full of logs on our right, which I figured had to be the Dadu He, followed by a descent to a plain.

At a quarter to seven we arrived at a station where a large number of people seemed to be getting off. I could not see the name of the station anywhere so I asked one of my neighbours if this was Emei. He said not, but shortly after resuming he said something to me and then began preparing to leave the train. This time we were approaching Emei. The train stopped at Emei station at five past seven and I brusquely battled my way off before the throngs of new passengers could get on. I had barely set foot on the platform before I was accosted by a tout for a minibus to Baoguo. He also wanted to know if I wished to take a bus up the mountain. I told him that I was going to walk, not that I planned to go any further today other than finding a bed for the night in Baoguo. His price for the minibus started at three kuai, came down to two kuai before I’d even had a chance to begin haggling, and he settled on my very first offer of one kuai!

Very soon we were underway on our short ride through the miserable looking town of Emei to the village of Baoguo at the foot of Emei Shan. Upon leaving the bus I began to walk up the hill through the village, running the gauntlet of restaurants, souvenir stalls and old grannies selling maps of the sacred mountain, looking for the Hongzhushan Binguan. After twice being directed to the wrong place I arrived at a rather smart reception area to find a young man who spoke moderately good English. When I asked him for the cheapest room he rifled through sheets of papers before coming up with the outrageous price of twenty kuai for a bed in a dormitory. I expressed my surprise in the politest possible manner and he promptly reduced the asking price to seventeen; or so I thought. It was still ridiculously expensive but, after a sleepless night on the train, I just wanted to get some sleep in a bed for a few hours so I said that I would take it. I began to fill out the registration form, and whilst doing so the guy said I think you would be more comfortable in a ninety yuan room, with colour TV, video and bathroom. I assured him that a dormitory would be perfectly adequate for my simple needs and handed over a RMB20 note. Sorry sir, we can only take FEC he said apologetically. Of course, I replied, how stupid of me! I never really thought I’d get away with it in such a major tourist destination, but it was worth a try, having paid in RMB in Lijiang nearly all the time. But when I put the exact amount of FEC17 down on the counter the entire transaction fell apart. He told me that the room was seventy kuai! What? I exploded, seventy kuai for a dormitory. You have got to be joking! But he was not joking, even though he had definitely started off at twenty; I could not possibly have misheard that. I pointed this out to him but he was adamant. This is outrageous! I responded, there is no way you can charge seventy kuai for a dormitory. He assured me that he could, saying that this was normal everywhere. When I pointed out to him that dormitories in Kunming, Dali and Lijiang ranged from six to ten kuai he practically accused me of being a liar. My final attempt to reason with him was a lie, telling him that I had actually stayed at this very hotel two years ago when the price for a dormitory was only fifteen kuai, which was in reality the price quoted in the current edition of Lonely Planet. Yet again he told me I was wrong. I could contain my temper no longer. I screwed up my partially completed registration form, threw it at him, gave him a few succinct expletives in English and walked out, still absolutely fuming.

I strolled slowly back down the road, taking the time to calm myself, and then tried the hotel at the junction with the main road. They asked for a hundred kuai initially but immediately dropped the price to sixty on seeing my look of total disbelief. At least this was for a private room and not in a dormitory, but there was no way that I was going to pay that sort of price for accommodation. I had read that prices at Emei Shan were an incredible rip-off, boosted by the overseas Chinese tourists who visit in their droves and who were apparently prepared to pay virtually any price that was asked of them. If that was the case then they had certainly ruined it for the rest of us.

I now had no option, it seemed, but to try my luck at Baoguosi, the first of the eight monastic guest houses on Emei Shan. Finding the place was easy enough, but finding where I could book a room was considerably more difficult, and I still had to pay the one kuai monastery entrance fee. When I eventually found the correct place a young monk who spoke some English attended to me, relieving me of ten kuai in exchange for a double room and five mao for a ticket for the shower tonight. When I asked him if I could store my luggage here whilst I climbed the mountain he said that he was afraid not. Later on I debated with the idea of renting the room for another two nights and then keeping the gear that I didn’t want to take with me on the climb locked in the room because, unusually for China, I had been given a key to the padlocked door of the room, for a refundable five kuai deposit. I had yet to ask if this were possible, but I couldn’t see why not. For the price of ten kuai the room wasn’t bad. Only one of the beds had bedclothes, but then I only needed one bed in any case. The bed was not too hard and would hopefully be warm enough, despite the evident dampness in the air. My first task once in the room was to take out my laundry from Lijiang and hang it up to air, for some of it was still slightly damp. This done I went out again to find some breakfast.

The monastery restaurant was closed and so I went to one of the local establishments nearby, where I had two steamed buns with vegetable filling, two long, thin pastries, a bowl of rice gruel, which I hadn’t asked for, and a large steaming mug of fresh jasmine tea. Apart from the gruel the food was very good and cost a reasonable four kuai. To buy the new toilet roll that I was in need of I had to walk further down the hill into the village. That done I returned to the monastery, this time flashing the receipt for my room at the entrance so that I didn’t have to pay again. I had a much-needed crap and then sat down on the bed to write my diary, finishing off yesterday’s entry and bringing a close to Volume III before making a start on the events of today in a pristine new notebook. After I had finished, rather than taking a nap as I had originally intended, I decided to go out and explore two of Emei Shan’s major monasteries; Baoguosi, where I was staying, and Fuhusi, about a kilometre along the road from here. Before that, however, I had lunch in the monastery restaurant which was now open. Although the restaurant fare was all supposedly vegetarian I chose a dish of peas and chicken hash, along with a bowl of steamed rice. The chicken in the hash seemed to consist of small slivers of crispy chicken skin and fat, and the peas were of the processed cannonball variety from my school dinner era. Despite that it was very tasty and filling, and the price was only three kuai.

After eating I set out on my exploration of Baoguosi, the largest of the monasteries on Emei Shan. Much of it was quite old, with its origins in the sixteenth century, although it had since been much restored. When I had first arrived this morning it had been seething with visitors, but it was now pleasantly quiet, with most of those early morning visitors presumably now having ascended further up the mountain. Some of its statuary was both large and impressive and very colourful. Unfortunately it was also nearly all enclosed behind large glass panels, making flash photography pretty much a waste of time, and it was far too dark for shots utilising natural light without a tripod. I took a photograph of a giant bronze incense burner in an exterior courtyard and then a couple of some of the detail of an interesting terracotta relief panel, but was prevented from taking any more by a monk, being told that it was forbidden. I had just finished my tour and was about to leave when I was ambushed by a Chinese vision in a bright green jacket who wanted me to pose for some photographs with her, and then each of her five friends in turn, and finally all of us together. Most of these were taken by one of the many professional photographers that swarmed all over Baoguosi. Once they had finished I asked for the compliment to be returned, getting their professional to take one of all of us with my camera, for no extra charge! I was aware that the gorgeous woman who had approached me had most proprietarily put her hands on my shoulders as I squatted in front of them to ensure that my head wasn’t chopped off by their photographer, my being considerably taller than these Chinese. I also noticed that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but sadly we were destined never to meet again!

My explorations and encounters at Baoguosi now complete I went to enquire about the storage of my possessions before climbing the hill to Fuhusi. My proposal of renting the room for an extra couple of nights just for storage purposes was rejected, the same guy then adding that I could ask at one of the hotels. I was hardly going to return to either of the places I had rejected this morning and instead I went in search of the Xixiang Fandian, but nobody that I asked seemed to have heard of it. Eventually I returned to the monk at Baoguosi and asked him which hotel he thought I should use. He directed me to one on a little lane to the left of the monastery entrance. It was a dreary concrete hulk of a place where I certainly wouldn’t have entertained staying, but the girl that I spoke to at the reception desk had no objections to my keeping a bag there for a couple of days, for the rather steep price of four kuai. Having solved this problem at last I walked down the hill to a junction and then began the easy climb up the road to Fuhusi. It was still quite an overcast day but was now a lot warmer than it had been this morning, and even this gentle climb had me sweating inside my Berghaus jacket, although I didn’t want to take it off as it wasn’t quite warm enough for that.

Fuhusi (Tiger Taming Monastery) was set amidst the forested lower slopes of Emei Shan and, once I had left the road, involved climbing a short but meandering path through the trees and streams to the steps at the foot of the monastery. In terms of its buildings it was a little drab but it is located in a lovely setting with the misty slopes of the mountain behind, and the halls were again filled with colourful statues. Off to the left of the main halls, in a courtyard of its own, was an attractive wooden pavilion containing a seven metre tall, slender copper pagoda. Having completed my photography I once again became the target of the Chinese tourists in search of something a little more exotic in their own photographs of Fuhusi. I posed with various members of one group, sadly all male, before bidding them farewell, only to be accosted by another two guys at the steps leading to the first hall.

Leaving Fuhusi I made a half-hearted and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to find the path up to Leiyinsi, the next monastery along on this particular trail. I was not overly concerned that I didn’t find it because it did not even warrant a comment in either guide book. Instead I made my way back down past the enormous accommodation blocks attached to Fuhusi. Apparently they could house four hundred people and seat two hundred at a time in the restaurant. As I was passing I noticed a sign above a part of the complex with three Chinese characters and the Pinyin transliteration beneath them. I laughed aloud when I read the latter because it pronounced Gnij Ix Uh; they had written it all back to front and it should have been Hu Xi Jing! There was nothing further that I wanted to do today, so when I returned to my monk’s cell, a most luxurious one by Daoist monk standards it has to be said, I finally lay down for my long-awaited nap at four o’clock, setting my alarm for six-thirty to ensure that I was awake in time for the hot showers at seven o’clock.

At a quarter to seven, feeling considerably refreshed and restored after my nap, I went to investigate the whereabouts of the showers. They turned out to be a good distance away from my room, in the vicinity of the entrance. I returned to the room and stripped down to T-shirt and shorts and then went back again to the showers armed with my shampoo and towel. The water was just pleasantly hot and I had a long soak beneath the jets for about ten minutes before shampooing and rinsing. Back in the room I shaved, using one of the enamel bowls filled with hot water from the vacuum flask, dressed and then went to dinner.

The restaurant was already winding down its operations for the evening, most of the guests evidently having eaten before bathing, and I was only able get the remnants of the cabbage and cauliflower dishes, along with a large bowl of rice. The vegetables were practically stone cold and not terribly appetising. When I had finished my meagre repast I checked what time I needed to be back by, for the main gate was already firmly bolted and padlocked and I had to use a side entrance to get in and out. The man I spoke to said I should be back by nine o’clock, which gave me just under an hour. I wandered down into the village of Baoguo, where there was still plenty of activity. Virtually every restaurant that I passed wanted me to come in and eat, and many were the scene of some truly awful karaoke performances by Chinese tourists. I carried on to the end of the strip and then worked my way back again, stopping at the place where I’d had breakfast this morning for a beer, a local brew called, appropriately enough, Emeishan Pijiu.

When I returned to the monastery I found a group of ten to twelve monks, most of them dressed in long yellow robes, still chanting and playing a variety of musical instruments in the main hall as they had been earlier. At the head of the table and raised up above the others was the monk who I presumed must be the abbot. He too was dressed in yellow, was very old and sported a wonderful headdress in the style of a castellated crown, covered with red pompoms and tassels. It was similar to those that I had frequently seen at the photo booths in major tourist destinations, where you could dress up like a Ming dynasty emperor or similar for your portraits, but this particular example was clearly the genuine article. The music and the chanting were especially pleasing to the ear and, now that the crowds who had flocked around whilst I was having my dinner had gone, I was able to stand right in the entrance to watch and listen. I stayed until shortly after nine o’clock, but I could still hear them upon returning to my room, and the rituals continued until almost half past ten.
Back in my room I sorted out my gear into what I wanted to take with me in my daypack tomorrow and what I would leave at the hotel in my backpack. That done I sat down on the bed to finish off my diary entry for today before settling down at ten-forty, intent on a good night’s sleep prior to an early start tomorrow morning.