Jinfo Mountain rises out of the humid hills of southern Chongqing like a lump of dark green stone, its summit around twenty-two hundred metres, ringed by sheer limestone cliffs that fall for hundreds of metres in places. The name means Golden Buddha, and the story is that at sunset the cliffs of the peak catch the last light and take on the colour and shape of a seated figure. The mountain is a tableland, a block of limestone lifted high and sliced by weather, and the top is covered in clouds for much of the year, in a world of mist, bamboo, moss and rhododendron.
UNESCO lists Jinfoshan as part of the South China Karst, a vast area of limestone landscapes with towers, caves, gorges and sinkholes that was inscribed in stages. A large number of rare plants and animals live on the mountain, including several kinds of monkey, which are sometimes seen from the paths. To the north-east lies Wulong, another part of the same listing, with natural bridges and a sinkhole of staggering size called Qingkou Giant Doline, the kind of spot used as a film location for the Hollywood blockbusters.
The mountain roads of Chongqing are exciting. They climb in steep, repeated switchbacks through forest, with hairpins every hundred metres or so and a rail only on the worst drops, and then run along the edge of plateaus with long views across a sea of cloud. Surface quality varies widely, with fresh asphalt in some stretches and potholes, mud and rockfall in others, and rain falls frequently, so the roads are often wet. Fog is dense in the morning. Summer can be hot and humid, but the mountain stays cool, and the best times are spring and autumn.
Puhechang is a hamlet of about sixteen hundred people some thirty-six kilometres away, so do not count on fuel there. Fill up in a larger town, such as Nanchuan or Wulong, before heading into the hills. Food is the sharp, numbing, chilli-laden cooking of Chongqing, famous for hotpot. Foreign riders in China face strict rules about licences, plates and guides, so check the situation beforehand, and bring a waterproof layer because the mountain makes its own weather.