Time for another grotto. We’ve had pretty good luck with them before. Mati Si is about 65 km outside of Zhangye and is named “Horse Hoof Temple” because an heavenly horse supposedly left a hoof imprint in a cave.

Unlike Maiji Shan, Mati Si isn’t contained in just one mountain. There are actually several grottoes scattered throughout the landscape in several mountains and cliffs. The temples also have a distinct Tibetan feel. If I knew more about Buddhism, I might be able to describe it better, but the prayer flags (pictured above) scattered throughout the area tipped me off.

Our first stop was the grotto structure in the above picture. As you can imagine, the pathways that connect different rooms are oftentimes in the mountain itself, a little bit like our former Hobbit hole in Hawaii. This means that a lot of acrobatics through tunnels have to be performed in order to successfully walk through the grottoes.

Behind the prayer flags

In the temple

Walking through the temple

In addition to grottoes, Mati Si also has a fantastic scenic area. We’re pretty far into China’s northwest. The landscape is much more arid and dry. Think Iran or Afghanistan. This is not the China where pandas eat bamboo and morning mist lies on top of green hills. This is dust storms and camels. It’s also rugged and mountainous due to its proximity to the Tian Shan range. Some of that range (I think it’s that range) is visible from Mati Si, and that’s where Cindy and I went hiking.

After our hike, we visited one more grotto. While slightly smaller than the first grotto, this one had a curious feature that we would not discover until we were inside the mountain.

So my angle kind of sucks, but see that temple in the background? It’s suspended in the air. There is no way to get to it from the ground. The only way to reach it is through the mountain itself. Remember what I said about acrobatics?

Inside the mountain is a straight vertical tunnel. There are no steps. Instead, the monks have fixed a series of metal bars and planks to the sides of the wall that visitors are expected to grab and step on in order to hoist themselves up to the temple. Cindy is demonstrating the proper temple climbing technique in the above pictures.

Here’s the view from the top of the tunnel. That little face way down there is Cindy

The grottoes and temples themselves did not allow pictures inside. One particular grotto was unbelievably deep. Like we probably walked in 100 meters and it turned to connect with another hallway before leading us out. That was the most spectacular one. Overall, the grottoes weren’t quite as impressive as Maiji Shan’s, but that’s not exactly a fair comparison. The levitating nature of the temples and the terrific landscape more than made up for the slightly less stunning grottoes.

Back in Zhangye, we took the rest of the day to catch up on blogging on work. If we haven’t mentioned it before, the best part about extended independent travel is that we’re never in a rush. It’s not like we only have a two week vacation and every hour counts. If we want to take it easy, that’s what we do. Case in point, most people spend one day in Zhangye and see the two primary sights (Mati Si and Danxia) in one day. We elected to take a leisurely hike in Mati Si and see Danxia tomorrow.