Soyosan is a mountain located between two cities, Pocheon and Dongducheon.

Previously I mentioned the Soyosan metro station of the blue line; so, now we know why the metro station has this name. In Chinese, the mountain name is 逍遥山. The character 山 simply means “mountain”. Two characters 逍遥 might be translated into English as “wandering around at leisure”, “wander for pleasure”, “to be blissful”, “unrestrained”, “free”, “freedom”, “serenity” and so on. So, I would translate the whole name as the Mountain of Freedom or the Mountain for Pleasurable Wandering. Actually, that is what people do there, wander, enjoy the time, feel free and easy there.

For many centuries, the mountain was a spiritual place attracting thinkers and monks. Thus, in 654, during the Silla Kingdom, Wonhyo, a priest and commentator of the Korean Buddhist tradition, found Jajaeam (自在庵 ) temple, which exists till now. I planned to visit it too, and I would if the walk doesn’t kill me. By the way, the temple name might be translated as Monastery of Freedom: 自在 “to feel free” or, “free” as Ishrava in terms of Buddhism, and 庵 “Buddhist monastery”.

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On the way to Soyosan mountain.

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Hardly, but, since I am almost a professional small seal script translator, I have resolved the inscription on the gate. Of course, that happened not without the help of the almighty Internet. I applied the same algorithm I used to resolve the sentence from the museum: just search the characters I found and hope the rest of undefined characters will appear in the sentence. This time it wasn’t that easy, there was no such combination of the words. I have noticed that the characters in the gate name 逍遥山 自在庵 are spelt from the right to the left, which is unusual for me; then, I reversed the sequence of characters I recognized, added 逍遥山 and searched again. It was a success.

京畿小金刚

The problem was in 京 and 金, which I thought might be 金, but, after checking all the possible spelling styles, I gave up. I guess the task would be much easier if I know that the province Gyeonggi in Chinese is spelt as 京畿. The Chinese Baidu gives such an explanation, “In the spring, azalea and hawthorn flowers form a magnificent scenery, and the autumn leaves are also very charming, so the mountain is known as the Diamond of Gyeonggi“.

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My friend recommended me to climb up the hill by the route #4 to the Gongjubong peak, then go to the highest point, Uisangdae and then go down by route #2. That seemed easy to me, so I started running up!

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The majority of the visitors are ancient haraboji (grandfathers) and halmoni (grandmothers), relaxing, sitting, eating, playing games; some of them even climb high up to the peak. Why are there only old people? The first reason is that youngsters are at schools and workplaces at that time. The other reason is that the area is highly populated by old people. They don’t want to live in the noisy crazy metropolitans, they want to feel the calm and relaxation, come closer to nature to feel free.

I was walking and walking, plenties of paths changed, plenties of people passed by on the way down, but the first peak was not showing up through the impenetrable forest. Each time I climbed a plateau I was just shocked that is not the peak.

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At some moment I climbed high enough to see one of the peaks, this inspired me.

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Then a plateau with a nice view appeared, however, that wasn’t the peak yet. A haraboji was there too.

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While climbing, I was hunting wildlife and ancient items too. Maybe a 삵 sag or a 담비 dambi is living in the hole.

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Finally! A view from the Gongjubong peak, Dongducheon beneath. The next step is to reach the highest point of Soyosan, Uisangdae peak.

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I was really surprised when saw the stair going down, I expected I have to go only up, it is more tiring.

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Less than a kilometre left.

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This view reminds me of the classic oriental paintings, far blur sky one background and the fir growing like a haze to match the environment.

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And here it is! 587 m! This is the highest mountain I climbed. It is very hard, as you can see, to climb to the very top of the peak, I am surprised how elder people doing that. The guy on the photo smiled and said passing his phone to me, “Camera, please”.

After this moment, everything went wrong. I supposed to easily go down by the route #2, so I passed further. I came to a plateau, there was a sign, showing to the left. So, I went that way.

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Periodically the path was hard to find, going down, it was becoming less and less recognizable. Sometimes I heard the voices talking somewhere around. I was just going down and surprised, why this route is not as well organized as the path #4. Finally, I came to a very steep cliff. I thought, “That’s why my friend recommended me to go up by the path #4, path #2 is really hard”. Then, I had to slide down from a cliff about 2 m height. Space there was very narrow and the next cliff was narrower and much lower. “Should I jump?”. Then I thought, “Hm, there’s something wrong”. And I realized that the game is over. That what I am doing is very dangerous. If I fall down, nobody is going to find me and I will die. I decided to climb up and find the right way. Actually, climbing up the cliff was much harder because I needed to pull up, it was hard to find something to hold to.

I have contacted my friend, he told me I am on the right way. I was just wandering around and looking for anything like a path. Finally, my friend recommended me just to go back in the same way. I said, “No, I am so far away from there, I will just find the right way”. He said, “OK, you can die”. After some period of time, I decided to back to the way I came here. I thought I will just quickly go back to the plateau with the sign, and then back to Uisangdae, then a little bit more to Gongjubong and then finally go down. But, when I started climbing up, I felt that I am absolutely exhausted, dehydrated, my heart was crazily beating, huge dozes of blood were almost tearing up my neck. By the time I reached the cliff, I was walking down for about 20 minutes already. When climbing up, I had to make stops every 10 meters to calm down, because my heart was near to burst. From the 0.5 l of water I had on the beginning, almost nothing left. I sipped I bit and dream about gallons of water I am going to drink when I come back to the city. Another horrible thing is that I forgot my power bank at home (actually, I thought I lost it), what almost never happens. I wasn’t trying to save the charge of my phone, because I relied on the power bank. And here, I am almost dead, and the discharged phone kills me more!

Later I showed the sign to my friend, it was correct, but I didn’t find the path #2. I was passing by all the narrow or wide, steep or flat paths I have seen on the way to Uisangdae and I couldn’t wait until this adventure to be finished.

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I remember I was resting for a few times on the steep stairs I saw when going from Gongjubong to Uisangdae. There was almost no one, but I didn’t want anyone to find me and call an ambulance.

After reaching the Gongjubong peak I felt relief. Even thou my legs were shaking, and the way down seemed became much longer, I walked with big steps given up to the gravity.

When I reached the root of the mountain, I remembered that still there is a long way to the shop. I bought one bottle of water while waiting for my friend to pick me. Then one more. And I started the third one.

This day I walked almost 12 km, 18000 steps and 229 floors! This is my record on “floors”.

The day ended up with a dinner cooked by my Korean mother. Chick stuffed with rice, ginseng roots and other seasonings.