Hang by a thread

Give the terrestrial route a miss and take to the skies in a cable car when you're in Hong Kong next. The lofty path is sure to give you plenty of food for thought

When I first visited HongKong last year, I hadthe option of eitherchilling with membersof the Disney clan or of spendingthe balmy afternoon in a cable car,taking in sweeping views of mountainsand the sea. I chose the latter.

I'd always been fascinated withthe idea of being hauled up a hill ina rickety car. The experienceseemed like a metaphor for lifeitself: You ride the steep gradient ina fragile body. One moment you'redangling precariously high and theother, you're seemingly in free fall.Smitten by the other existentialpossibilities that a cable car ridewould throw up, I chose to try theNgong Ping 360, a cable car servicethat connects Tung Chung on thenorthern part of Hong Kong'sLantau island with Ngong Ping, ahilly tourist district on the west.

Never having been in a cable carbefore, I imagined that I'd feel thatfamiliar surge of adrenaline as whenyou're on the highest point of agiant wheel. But the Ngong Pingcable car was a rather more genteelexperience: we trooped into thecars in orderly groups of four andwatched as the glass doors shut oneither side. From the starting station,the steep ascent ahead lookedlike an insurmountable obstacle.

But if the 5.7-km-long cablewayfelt the strain of carrying nearly3,500 people per hour in each direction,it didn't show. The cars glidedup with nary a shudder and we suddenlyhad the gift of perspective. Anarrow sliver of land jutted out intothe South China Sea and aircraftstook off from it towards the horizon.This was Airport Island.

The cars soared over the greenvalleys of the North Lantau CountryPark, a 22-square-km flanked bypeaks on the east and west; anddipped over the shimmering watersof the sea. A country trail ranthrough the park and a lone manbraved it. This 2.3 km-long-trail -the Wong Lung Hang Country Tail -winds through dense forest coverand is considered one of the mostchallenging hikes in Hong Kong.

The lone hiker may have takenthe more arduous route, but wewere all pilgrims drawn in onedirection: towards a gigantic bronzeBuddha perched on a hill. This wasthe Tian Tan Buddha, a 112-feet tallstatue of the seated Buddha thatwas completed in 1993. You have toclimb 268 steps to reach the statue,which is said to be visible even innearby Macau on a clear day.

A light drizzle came down on uswe looked out over Hong Kong fromthe viewing platform of the BigBuddha. The cableway looked morefragile from this distance. I foundout later that since it was inauguratedin 2006, the service had suffereda series of system failuresincluding a serious accident in 2007,when an empty car fell off the cableand plunged into a hilly area.

If I had known then, I may havefelt differently about hanging by athread, as it were. But innocence isbliss and I'm glad I chose the loftypath to discovering Hong Kong.

Vidya is a part of the HT Pulloutsteam who is far from Zen in real life

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