Leaving Wuyuan I caught a bus across the provincial border to Anhui and nearby Huangshan. This is one of the most famous mountains in China and translates as Yellow Mountain. Coming from Lanshan (Blue Mountain) it's like I'm visiting all the colourful mountains of the world. There has to be a red and green mountain out here somewhere. I'll find them someday...Anyway, I caught a bus to Huangshan and after dropping off my big bag at the left luggage office caught another bus to the foot of the mountain, hoping to climb it that evening, sleep in a hostel at the top and watch the famous sunrise. It didn't quite work out that way. I wanted to go to Taiping, round the back of the mountain, which is closer to the hostels I wanted to stay in and also apparently a great ride up the cable car. However I hadn't reckoned on the distance involved and arrived too late for the last cable car up the mountain. I ended up in some grotty little shit-hole of a hotel with a toilet that didn't flush (I wasn't aware of that until I needed to use the flush...left a little parting gift there then) and didn't even have it's own key.
Ok, I thought, whatever, I can deal with this. I'm not on top of the mountain to watch the sunrise, I'm alone in a small featureless town, I'm in a horrible hotel room...y'know, sometimes things just don't work out.
So I went for a walk, trying to find an internet bar. I wasn't having much luck, and all the hotels that I did pass by and had a look at were way too pricey for me. Following someone's random directions to an internet bar I ended up round the back of some shops in a pretty unlikely looking location. I stopped to ask a friendly-looking lady if she knew of an internet bar and ten minutes later came away with a new, comfortable room in her guesthouse, complete with internet and computer in the room, a lift back to my old crappy hotel to collect my things and a dinner invitation from two random guys from Shanghai who were sat outside the restaurant next door!
Perfect! From a nightmare situation I ended up having a great evening. I chatted for a long time with the two guys, who insisted on paying for all the food and beer and had a chance to catch up with emails and blog. All just 100 yuan. Great. The next morning I was fully prepared to climb a mountain.
A little while ago, when I was still on a quest to visit every province in China, I was not coming up with much for Anhui. It's a poor province, often hit by flooding (it is at the moment), that really does not feature on the tourist trail, with the exception of one place - Huangshan. In theory I'm not much of a hiker or climber or desolate wilderness kinda man, and I did wonder if I really ought to be coming here to climb a mountain in the first place. I thought of skipping it, but it was so close to Wuyuan and so different from all the other planned destinations I had on the agenda so I gave it a go. I am so glad I did. My God it was absolutely amazing.
I went up the cable car as originally planned and had the most amazing views. Definitely chose the right side to ascend, and even if I didn't see that sunrise I still saw how the cloud-filled valley resembled an ocean with the craggy peaks jutting through the surface like islands in the sea. Pretty cool. The area that dropped us off at was in my opinion the most stunning of all and, at that point, still fairly quiet. I knew that Huangshan was a major tourist spot among the Chinese, and that all Chinese absolutely love mountains in general, but I was not quite prepared for what I saw a little further along. As I approached the central part of the route the empty paths began to fill until they were absolutely jammed full of tourists. You could barely move. It was crazy. So many tour groups in their coloured hats following their flag-waving guides - this is China in tourist mode.
Still, if you tried a little and pushed to the edge of the pathways and fences, the views were still as immense and unspoilt as to make you feel that you really were alone up there. Prices for food and drink up there on the summit were extortionate, but I soon found out why. Everything is brought up there by hand. Along the way we (I was adopted by a family from Shandong and shown the way) passed several men carrying poles slung across their back balanced by crates of beer and water or baskets of fruit and vegetables. Back in Lanshan I would wonder just how people could carry around such heavy loads this way, and now here they were, climbing up stone steps to a height of around 1500 metres fully laden. That is impressive.
You could pay to experience first-hand the effort taken by these men and hire a sedan chair to take you up for 100 yuan a kilometre. I never thought anyone actually would, but several times the crowd was stopped on narrow sections to allow these things to pass by.
The highest peak was under repair, so I couldn't climb all the way to the top, but that really wasn't a problem... Trust me. I was up there for the best part of 8 hours walking, and in an attempt to find some further peace, decided to walk down instead of take another cable car. Worth it, but peace was still not there to be found. Still, I had a fantastic time and slept very well that night.
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