Into the hills...

Today I went to the northern part of Seoul to visit one of the hillside towns where some of the Buddhist and Shamanist temples are. Basically, you get out of the subway stop and just start walking uphill. I don't know if you can tell from the pictures below, but it's incredibly steep. It was a hot day, and after about 10 minutes of walking my shirt was totally soaked through. You just keep going up and up into the mountains.

After about 15 minutes of walking I came to the gate of the town and went in. I had my little Lonely Planet guide to follow, but that was about it as all the signs were only in Korean and there was almost nobody around. It was definitely the farthest away from civilization that I've felt since I got here. So I just kept going up, periodically seeing these small hillside homes that appear to be populated exclusively with single old women. I saw nary a man nor child, and nobody who appeared to be under 50.

I knew that I wanted to get to the Shamanist shrine Guksadang, but the path appeared to be blocked by a small piece of plywood about knee high. So I stepped over the plywood, wondering if this was not, in fact, a big mistake. Yep. Big mistake. I took two steps forward and three dogs came rushing at me, barking. They weren't very big, but two of them were quite aggressive, and started jumping up and grabbing my shorts with their teeth. At that moment a Korean woman came out and shoo-ed them away and apologized to me. I had inadvertantly wandered into here yard. She pointed the way to me, and off I went.

I spent about 45 minutes wandering around the hillside, looking at the shrines and temples. The shrines are modest, but there were a few peple at each one who had come to pray, so I was very quiet and asked permission before taking any pictures. I eventually hiked all the way up to the top of the mountain, which was satisfying, although the footing wasn't great and getting down was quite precarious. Still, it was pretty cool, and it was amazing to be only 20 minutes from a subway station and yet completely cut off from the city. If you didn't know, you wouldn't know. You know?