HuangShan / Yellow Mountain

Encouraged by our successful outing in the beginning of May we decided to make use of the nice and not-so-hot days of early June for a weekend trip to HuangShan, the Yellow Mountain. Being a bit away from Nanjing we had to take the night train on Friday night to be at our destination Saturday early in the morning. We, that's (french) Aude, (austrian) Christian and (german) me. At second thought we should have applied at the EU for funding of this field trip. Bugger! ;-)
But having ignored this opportunity to secure some financial support we had to do with the hard sleeper on the train. That's sounds a lot harder than it actually is, and as long as you don't mind open access to and from the aisle, mosquitos and dirty bed sheets you can save some money.
After a bit more than eight hours train ride and about 2 hours of sleep we arrived in HuangShan town and took a shabby minibus which brought us in around 1.5h to the Village of Tangkou. Fresh and relaxed as we were, we didn't mind the chinese lady telling all passengers through the loudspeaker system (which really deserved the prefix 'loud') about the latest opportunities, the best places to visit or the freshest gossip. It being communicated in Chinese we had no idea what it was and our interest was not too great anyway.

Having secured a hotel room for around 4 Euros per nose we were ready to hit the mountain and started to our 7 hours hike. Admittedly, we hung out bathing in a little river and resting in the sun a bit on the way. I am not sure if you would call it a hike actually, as the most is stairs. But that's what the Chinese call it and there were a lot of them. Stairs I mean.
The cable car being around 7 Euros there were quite a few local Chinese carrying all kind of goods up the mountain for the tourist shops, restaurants and hotels up there. I estimated that each of them was carrying about 60kg on their back. I don't wanna know what the money is they get for this hard job. The occasional lazy or old (or both) tourist was carried in a sedan chair by two carriers for comfort and loadsharing reasons.

The mountain scenery, nature and views were very nice and the day being of an agreeable temperature we enjoyed the whole thing very much. It felt very good to breat clean air and be away from the bustle and noise of the city.

On the top of the mountain we met again with the familiar hordes of chinese tourists, all wearing a red baseball cap and accompanied by the indispensable tourist guide with his megaphone.

After walking around on the top, which is a rather big area and worth a day for itself we had to skip the way down and take the cable car, which hurt a bit our sportive ambitions but greatly gratified our tired legs.

Back in the hotel we had to keep ourselves from falling asleep instantly and dragged each other to the next restaurant for some good chinese food.

The next day we spend sun and river bathing until we had to take the 5 hours bus back to Nanjing. The bus ride was an adventure in itself and there was no chance to sleep, but plenty of chance to be alternately horrified of the driving and thankful for the escape of deadly traffic situations.

For more pictures please visit here