Huangshan Part1

While I was looking forward to both the Bahamas and Xian, I was really looking forward to Huangshan (Yellow Mountain). I can sum up Huangshan in one word…WOW. It was all that I thought it would be and one of the best trips I have ever done in my life. The mountain does not disappoint.

I knew that there was not going to be much touristy stuff to do in Huangshan, it was all about climbing up the mountain. Before getting too deep, when I say climbing, I didn't have any climbing gear, it is not climbing like rock climbing; you see China knew it was an important mountain so they built stares out of the rock of the mountain going all the way up to the top. While this may sound like it isn't really mountain climbing, I can say that going up stairs for 4 hours is not the easiest thing to do.

I began my day with having a guy take me on the back of his bike to the bus/train station in the town of Tunxi (the town that I flew into). I then hopped on a very local mini bus after they said they were going to Huangshan. I was a little hesitant, but the tour books noted that small buses left the town routinely to go to Huangshan, so I was confident that it would take me to the mountain. The area in between Tunxi and the mountain was full of farms and it was a cool little trip. Along the way, we would stop when people would wave us down and they would hop onto the bus to go to the mountain, most of the people were hopping on with stuff to sell at the mountain as they were not going to climb the mountain. The bus took me into the small town at the base of the mountain and after a little explaining the mini bus eventually dropped me off at another bus station, this bus was going to take me up to the starting point of the mountain.

So there I was at the starting point and I had the choice of taking a cable car or walking up and, of course, I was there to climb it, so I started my journey up. From the bottom the mountain looked pretty cool and it was a great day no clouds in the sky. I was actually mistakenly taken to the wrong set of steps, there is an East Side and a West Side, I was taken to the East side steps. From what I understood it was shorter then the west side, so I was a little disappointed, but oh well as long I got to the top. In the end I was very happy to have gone up the East Side, while there were less "attractions" to see on the way up, the views were still absolutely amazing. There is a pretty funny story about my reaching the top of the mountain, if you want to see it, click here to jump to the blog post. After my journey to the top of the mountain, I then spent the next couple of hours exploring the peak of the mountain (note that the mountain actually has 72 peaks so you kind of just go around to different areas exploring). It was actually really good that I went up the shorter set of stairs because it gave me a lot more time to explore the peaks of the mountain and take great pictures from the top. I would actually recommend this for those people that only have a limited time (note there are also cable cars that take you to the top in a couple of minutes and then you can explore the peak much more easily, but that is not the funnest way to explore the mountain). Again, the views and the scenes from the top were stunning, the mountain itself is a really cool mountain but around every corner I just kept saying to myself…"This is awesome."