After taking one extra day rest and some strange Chinese pills the receptionist gave me against diarrhoea  we felt up to task of climbing the 6600 steps of the holy mount Tài Shān. We were lucky that it was an overcast and so very hot day. The way up the mountain was very nice, the whole path is carved out of the rocks as huge stairs and all along the route you find temples and calligraphy written hundreds of years ago into the rocks of mount Tai.

After climbing for about seven hours we reached the top of the mountain completely wet of sweat. Since we wanted to spend one night at the top of the mountain to see “the best sunrise in the world” we started looking for a hotel.  After declining two hotels for their poor sanitary facilities (which you will find important after spending the last three days on the toilet) we found a reasonable one where we spent the night.

In the morning at 5am we got up to see the famed sunrise. With my camera mounted on my tripod we headed out in to…. the mist… A thick fog had gathered on top of the mountain and the visibility was about 10 meters. Perhaps we should have burned some incense at those temples the day before it seems that luck is not with us on this trip. Even though there was no sunrise to see for us, I was able to make some very nice pictures of the temples in the fog, but unfortunately I used the custom setting on my camera that I programmed to take only RAW images. This means that I can’t upload the pictures to my website because they are not in JPG format and the computer here at the receptiondesk obviously has no RAW converter. When hand-holding the camera I used the other settings so I still could upload some fog pictures just to give you an impression. -In the mean time these pictures have been added-