Travel - The Yellow Mountain

Yes, nice view though!

My trip to the Yellow Mountain (HuangShan). Where shall I start?! It wasn’t a very pleasant trip but I already mentioned I would blog about it, so here we go!

On Wednesday morning we got on the 8am bus at South Shanghai Railway Station and we were excited! After 6.5 hours the bus dropped us in the small town, no bus station or anything so we didn’t really know where to go. We bumped into an American couple and they pointed us in the right direction. A walk towards the foot of the mountain started. It was a little strange though, we had to walk on the road (no footpath, so a bit dangerous) and there were constantly shuttle busses and cars passing by. Because we didn’t know how far we still needed to go we tried to catch one of these busses and finally an empty bus stopped and took us up the road (luckily, because it would have been a LONG walk). We got dropped off at the cable lift. We wanted to do the climb, but it was getting dark so we decided to take the cable lift. Up the mountain we tried to find our hotel (Xihqi Hotel) and after some walking we found it. We were all happy because it was misty and cold and we didn’t really prepare for that. We dropped our stuff in the room and went for some dinner. We were all very tired and had a big hike ahead of us (we thought) so we went to bed on time.

A misty first evening

Blue skies in China are rare!

 The next morning the alarm went off early and we got ready for a hike down. We decided to walk to the first cable lift, and see from there. We started walking, we couldn’t walk that fast, because there were a lot of people (it was Chinese holiday), but it was still ok, this way we didn’t get tired so quickly. We got to our first ‘checkpoint’, another hotel so we knew we were on the right track. We grabbed some early lunch and continued our journey. And that’s where it began, the queue. The rest of the day we basically stood in line until we reach the first cable lift. A hike of normally 3-4 hours lasted us 9 hours! And there was no way back/out. We just had to keep going. Obviously we misted our bus to Shanghai. Around 6pm we reached the cable lift and went down. There we had to take a half an hour shuttle bus and after that we had to take a taxi to the train station that took another hour. We were hoping for the night train back to Shanghai. But no, no train tickets to Shanghai anymore. Can you image how we felt? Kinda terrible. But we couldn’t just sit there, we had to find a hotel and make sure we could go on the bus the next day. We found an information spot and after using my best Chinese (I’m kinda bad) and calling my friend who does speak Chinese (Thanks Julie!) we figured it all out. We got a (reasonably cheap) hotel and we could probably get on the 8 or 9am bus the next morning. Again, exhausted we went to bed on time. 
At 7.30 the next morning we were in line (again) for the bus tickets. 8 and 9am busses were full. 10.30 That’s what they could give us. YES! YES! YES! So a couple of hours later we were finally on our way to Shanghai! FINALLY.

Only one of the picture with the queuing Chinese people...

To be honest, for me the trip wasn’t fun. Yes, there were some nice views, but no, we couldn’t enjoy them because of all the pushing Chinese people trying to cut the line everywhere. Of course we could laugh about it and we made some funny videos while waiting. It was definitely an unforgettable experience! 1 advice: NEVER TRAVEL DURING CHINESE OFFICIAL HOLIDAYS! Stay in the big city or get out of the country on time! (that’s what I’m going to do next Chinese holiday: SO looking forward to that!)