The Mountains of Seoul: Inwangsan

A Representative Bell

A few weeks ago, Yvonne and I hiked up Bukhansan with our entire college (that's a story to post soon), and with one weekend off to go to Busan and get sunburnt inbetween, last Saturday was our day to go up Inwangsan.

We hopped the subway to the Donggimun station and stopped to purchase two bottles of water and one bottle of Makgolli. This was the complete offseason for hiking, and the guy in the store was happy enough to have customers that he asked if we were going to Muak Temple and then took a few steps to the corner of the block and pointed out the way. We walked a road cut out of the hill, and as I looked at all the colorful protuberances on the restraining wall I thought of how quickly every sweaty hippie in the US would be climbing the wall.. well, if it were in the US.

The Wall I would Climb

We walked on into the temple area, and took a long, looping, and sometimes doubling-back, walk through the temple area. Plenty interesting to see, including a variety of (usually lone women) doing various shamanic (I think, since there were sacrifices, alcohol, etc) things in front of very large rocks.

Shamanisting

At one point we got too far back down the hill, or, maybe I should say, far enough down the hill to see that we hadn't made it to the top. We stopped to get some water and I snapped a picture of some kid/NK spy, crawling up the defensive wall and into what seemed to be army territory. About three minutes later soldiers were patrolling the area, but we never could tell if they 'caught' him, or if he was actually doing anything wrong.

The Dude makes his Escape

Then it was a wander down the other side of the hill, where Yvonne's faultless nose sniffed out every dead-end trail in the area. Then it was across the main street, to yet another hill, where we found a lovely exposed granite slab, where I enjoyed the sun and Yvonne induced vertigo in herself. Finally, famished from the spinning of her head, and me with my appetite whetted by some of the Makgeolli, we headed down to the road and had some delicious Tuegi Galbi, that was only somewhat ruined by how solicitous the ajumma was.

I leave you with a picture of Yvonne, terrified of a 15 degree incline, and me taking a deranged looking photo of my own face, whilst staring directly into the sun.