The main reason we
came to Huangshan to visit Mount Huangshan, one of China's most
famous mountains and a World Heritage site. But it rains a lot here
(180-odd days a year, apparently) and the forecasts for our first few
days weren't the best. The mountain is also understandably popular
with domestic tourists (more than 1.5 million people visit every
year), so we also thought that we should let the weekend pass before
we made our visit. Today was our last chance as we were due to get
the overnight train to Shanghai in the evening, so we got up early,
packed up and headed down to reception, where we checked out and left
most of our bags. We then went out to the front of the hotel and
hailed a taxi to take us to the bus station. There we made some
enquiries and hopped onto the bus to Tangkou – one of the gateways
to Mount Huangshan.
It took about an
hour to get there, the trip taking us through a lovely landscape of
steep forest-covered hills dotted here and there with tea bushes,
many of which were being tended by bamboo-hatted locals. Stands of
bamboo were also scattered within the forest, the individual poles
rising up like bright-green feather-dusters. At Tangkou, the bus
abruptly pulled off the road and stopped in front of a small
restaurant. Slightly bewildered, as usual, we hopped off and joined
the small crowd of Chinese passengers – clearly tourists themselves
- heading off down the hill. We soon arrived at the shuttle-bus
station, where we bought our tickets and hopped aboard another bus,
which drove us back through town and up a steep, switchback-filled
road through forests of bamboo with poles the diameter of a man's
thigh to the car park at the base of the mountain. There we paid the
entrance fee and bought our tickets for the cable car to the top.
The ride up was
breathtaking, taking us over and between the various granite ridges
that swept down off the mountain. When we reached the top, we got
some directions and headed out to see what we could see. And all that
we could see was some of the most spectacular views I've ever seen.
Trails took us through low pine forest to a series of lookouts that
were populated by large numbers of tourists. After negotiating the
throngs, we would stand and drink in the awe-inspiring scenery. I
tried my best, but it was a real struggle to capture the majesty of
what was all around us – despite the fact that I took more than 600
photos.
With so many Chinese
tourists around, many of them on the elderly side, all with their
camera phones out to take pictures of the scenery, the girls were in
great demand, making regular stops for selfies and group shots. One
particularly exuberant granny manhandled them quite violently in her
attempts to stage manage her photos, removing Sarah's hat because she
didn't approve if it and roughly grabbing the girls' arms to move
them hither and thither.
After we had been
there a while, it started to rain a little, and then quite a lot. We
checked out a few more views, but with the rain coming down and the
mist blocking the views, we decided to call it a day and headed for
the stairs down, which are said to be more than 1,500 years old in
places. It was here that we encountered the porters. For some reason
(cost probably), the food for the restaurants on the mountain isn't
brought up in the cable car, but by porters who carry unfeasibly
heavy loads on a bamboo pole on their shoulders over a distance of
more than 6.5 kilometres, most of which consists of steep, often
slippery stone stairs. The sight of these poor men struggling with
their burdens of fresh vegetable and beer made us all feel slightly
queasy and we all agreed that if we ever stayed on the mountain we
would bring all of our food up with us.
Back in town, we
went to our customary beer and cards spot for some beers and cards
while we waited for 5pm, when our restaurant opened. Then we had one
last meal there, headed back to the hotel to pick up our stuff and
caught a taxi out to the train station, where we lugged our bags up
to the waiting room and settled in to wait. As we sat, I had one more
look at the train tickets and noticed something odd – next to the
carriage number, instead of the four consecutive seat numbers I was
used to seeing, we had one ticket that said 004 and three that said
003. There were some Chinese characters next to the numbers that were
different on the three 003 tickets, suggesting that we did indeed
have four different berths, but why were these ones different to
normal?
Our train duly
arrived, slightly earlier than expected, catching everyone in the
waiting room by surprise, and there was a great rush to grab our bags
and join the great rush to get outside and under the underpass to the
train. As we walked up alongside it to our carriage, the mystery was
solved. On the trip so far, for all of our overnight trains we've had
a four-berth cabin to ourselves. Not this time. When I had booked our
Chinese tickets, I had always opted for the soft sleepers, but for
this leg, those tickets were sold out, so I had gone for hard
sleepers and thought no more about it – a harder bed, so what? What
I hadn't appreciated was that the hard sleepers were essentially
third class – these carriages have six berths stacked up in a
'compartment' that's open to the corridor; a much more communal
experience. It's a bit like being in a mobile dormitory, rather than
having your own private room. Our three 003s meant that we had one
stack of beds to ourselves, as well as a middle bunk in the adjacent
column. We put the girls in the two middle bunks and Kate offered to
take the top one, but as the reality of that option dawned on her
(it's awfully high up!), she wavered a little and I offered to take
it.
In the end, what had
at first seemed like a bit of a disaster became a bit of a fun
adventure and I'm really glad that we had this experience. It helped
that it was a late train and we had already had dinner, so all we had
to do was sort our bags out, do our ablutions and hop into bed; I
think that a whole day and night of it might have been a bit less
enjoyable. It also helped that the other bunks in our lot of six were
occupied by a lovely middle-aged couple and their equally lovely
teenage daughter, who did everything they could to make the crazy
white family feel comfortable.
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