Guidebook, you may now die in a fire

Today I was determined to go hiking on this little mountain right here. My guidebook had lots of good stuff to say about it - that it was a holy place for Buddhists, which landmarks to hit on the way up, some history, blah blah blah. What it was conspicuously missing was maps, and my big city-wide map doesn't show enough detail to tell me how to get to the base of the mountain from the nearest subway station. All the guidebook had to say was, "Leave the station, go toward the Hyundai Apartments, and follow the road behind them to the gate." Considering the honeycomb of streets between the station and my destination, this advice was almost completely unhelpful.

I'm not lost. I know exactly where I am. It's the mountain that I can't find.

Wait, how did I get up here?

Okay, now I'm lost. Still, it was interesting to wander around these streets. I said before that Seoul was like a maze, but here in the alleys between these tiny houses and apartments was like an M.C. Escher. Tiny staircases went nowhere, skinny little disproportioned buildings snaked between alleys. It was cool to see, but a nightmare to navigate.

Hey, here's a main road... Oh... It's the station. I'm back where I started.

Wait, there it is! That's my mountain! HOW DO I GET TO IT?

This is the point at which I began pulling my hair and rending my clothing, and I had to find a park bench so I could sit down and listen to soothing music for a while. 

This is the gate the guidebook was talking about, and I finally, finally found it. Almost immediately I ran into an American guy named Ben. He's a grad student in mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech, and he's here to visit his brother who's a teacher. We expressed mutual frustration with the street layout and then began looking for a way up the mountain. Dozens of vertigo-inducing staircases branched and wound around Buddhist temples and altars, and all we could do was keep going up and hope we were on the right track.

We finally found the actual trail part of the mountain. I had expected it to level out into a hiking trail, but not so much.

This trail was intense, and we were scrambling hand-over foot as much as we were walking. Runoff had created dozens of pseudo-trails that led nowhere, so we were pretty consistently lost. But getting lost while hiking in the trees is a lot more peaceful that getting lost while dodging trucks in a narrow alley, so it was actually quite nice.

Buddhist monks lived on the mountainside, tents made of branches and garbage. They drank from the springs, fed the birds, and kept little altars. I didn't feel right taking pictures of them, but they were friendly enough. When Ben and I took a dead-end trail, one of them pointed us in the right direction.

We made it! The top was gorgeous. Seriously, you could see the whole city from there. I wished I had a tripod and a panoramic camera, because there's no way I could do it justice. I think if I get the chance I'll bring lunch up there and hang out for a while, because I just loved it. But then, there are other mountains to explore too.

Ben says he's going to play virtual golf with his brother tomorrow (this sounds like the most ridiculous game ever). I gave him my number. He's leaving on Sunday, but maybe I'll make some friends or at least have someone to hang out with for the day.

EDIT: My bad. Some of the temples were Buddhist, but the monks living on the mountainside were actually  shamanists. I'll have to read more about traditional Korean shamanism, because it sounds pretty cool.