Huangshan Day 2 Part 1

Continued from Beijing Day 5 & Huangshan Day 1.

Today we are heading up Huangshan(Yellow Mountain). This is one of the most famous mountains of China and can be seen in very frequently in paintings and photos.

For the price of our room, we also get free breakfast.

We are literally the only guests having breakfast at this hour. They had a list of occupied rooms that had breakfast, and the list was pretty short. Not too many people staying here last night.

Boiled water, grew up drinking that stuff.

Breakfast was just ok.

Saw this painting in the breakfast room. Where do all maids and gardeners live in this fantasy world?

We need to walk to the KFC, where we had dinner last night, from there, we can hail down a taxi to take us to the bus station.

KL points. We’ve stored our large backpacks with the hotel, and for today and tomorrow will be living out of our day packs.

Fake flower.

Hmmm….

I am a terrible person. But apparently so is RL, because she’s laughing at this photo as I am typing this.

OK, got a taxi. Our driver was very nice, told us where to find the bus once we got to the station.

Arrived at the bus station.

Asked the ticket booth, and door 8 is where our bus is at.

Found.

There were others on the bus already, so we got shafted to the crappy seat with the wheel arch right under us. Doh.

On our way, it’s about an hour to Huangshan.

They have mountains full of tall bamboos here.

Arrived in Tangkou, this town is the gateway to Huangshan.

Our bus stopped in front of some nondescript building, and the attendant told us that we had to walk a little bit farther down to catch another bus onto the mountain.

Here’s the station for the bus that goes up to Huangshan. This will be our third different ride for the day already.

Got the ticket, and now we wait.

Nickle and dimeing us on this trip.

Didn’t have to wait too long, the bus arrives shortly after we started waiting.

On the bus, RL and I sat by a couple from Australia(one was from England) on a year and a half long journey. They started in South Africa and traveled across land all the way through Africa, Middle East, and now they are in Asia. They make our travels seem so tame…

Starting to see some of the geography that Huangshan is so famous for.

As soon as the scenery started getting nicer, the bus stopped and let us off. From here, we will take a cable car to the top of the mountain.

This must be the way, the souvenir shops are here.

I finally saw another traveler with a Sony RX100, just like mine!! G, the Australian half of the couple mentioned earlier has a RX100 that’s even got more battle scars than mine. Not only that, instead of taking the cable car up the mountain, they are going to hike up the mountain…Damn it! They make me feel so lame as a traveler.

The line, or rather, lack of line for the cable car to the top. I read that this line can sometimes take over 2 hours long. Perhaps because it was a big holiday this past week, and it being early afternoon, there was not a long queue.

What things will look like once we head up the mountain…well, all the reviews say that the maps are outdated and the way finding on top of the mountain sucks.

Tickets to visit the mountain and for the cable car. It came out to 310 a person, which is pretty expensive. That’s like $50!

The really good news is that this is the line for the cable car.

Yup, literally zero person in line right now. We lucked out! It would have sucked if we had to wait here for hours.

OK, up we go!!! Weee!!! Since there’s no one in line, we were able to get a cable car just for the two of us.

Look at all those tall bamboos right under us.

Starting to see the real Huangshan.

Oooowww!!

Aaahhhh!!

Seriously, photos can’t do this place justice. It’s epic out here. Gotta see it with your own eyes.

This ride is taking so long, we got hungry. It’s just a bit past lunch time.

The famous pine trees in Huangshan that grow out of cracks in the rocks.

We passed one peak, and all of a sudden, we went into the clouds.

The cloud/fog is so thick that we literally could not see anything else but whiteness. Hope it clears up on the mountain…

That was a really long cable car. It took us 15 minutes to go up the mountain and we went up around 2500 feet in altitude.

Here we are, hiking Huangshan!!

I say hike, but really, it’s walking around a bunch of stone/concrete walkways and stairs.

And there are A LOT of stairs.

Reason why there are concrete walkways. The walkways are often built jutting out from the side of the rock face. I try not to think too much about how we are just cantilevered out in the middle of the air…