The Lake That Wasn't There

We'd made our way to Erdaobaihe with one aim, to see Tianchi (also known as Heaven Lake), the largest alpine volcanic crater lake in the world which straddles the China and North Korea border. It's pretty sacred to many too - Koreans believe their mythological founder descended from Changbaishan itself, the Manchu emperors of the Qing dynasty regarded it as their spiritual homeland and it's one of the three sacred mountains of the northeast for the Chinese.

Sadly, the mountain had other ideas. We'd got ourselves up to entrance to Changbaishan at the very earliest, only to discover that overnight sub-zero temperatures had resulted in ice on the path up to the lake and so it was shut to the public. Disappointing to say the least, and so we consoled ourselves with a hard boiled egg cooked in the sulphurous waters of the hot springs below. We also dutifully visited the 'small Heaven Lake,' which was underwhelming at best, but surrounded by beautiful woodland.

We came back down the mountain earlier than planned, and spent the afternoon exploring the parks in Erdaobaihe. Autumn is just beginning to show her face here, and the colours were beautiful. We also came across a rather lovely little sculpture park, making for a surprisingly satisfying afternoon given the main event of the day's letdown.

That evening we had our first Korean barbecue, which felt appropriate given how close we were to the border. We ordered steak and wild mushrooms and sat there looking hopefully at the grill in the middle of the table, clearly radiating the energy of stupid foreigners with no idea what they were doing. The restaurant staff took pity on us and did the barbecuing, which was both kind and probably necessary!!