iNdiGo: April 2014

We made it to HuangShan during summer holiday in 2011, 2nd of September.

HuangShan, the Yellow Mountain, is a part of Anhui province, and it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site too by the way. It is mentioned in the most used Chinese textbook published by Hanban (if you're learning Chinese, you know the red textbook we all use). It mentions the famous 迎客松 'welcoming-guest pine' and the 云海 'sea of clouds'. I never thought that I would go there tho because it was not as appealing as the Great Wall. Then, my seniors asked me whether I wanted to go to HuangShan or not. I said yes, why not, I'm always ready for adventure. Mountain sounds fun!

So we booked our train tickets and packed our stuffs!

We didn't stay too long tho, it was just a short trip because my seniors were doing their internship. They have limited day-offs so we went during public holiday and stayed there for only 2 days.

We took the night train to HuangShan, it was a sleeper train that took 12 hours to reach the city near HuangShan if I'm not mistaken. By the way, HuangShan can only be reached by train (more conveniently, rather than by car or public buses) and the train only go there twice a day, so you either take the afternoon train or the night one. Considering the hours, I think it's wiser if you take the night one so you don't have to sit in the train wide awake for the 12 hour journey.

Here's inside the train.

Ko Budi n Ci Lili

My 'wasn't ready for the camera' face turned out 'annoyed' face.

Oh, we bought the hard sleeper tickets and it wasn't that bad, it was pretty comfy but not too spacious. Maybe the soft sleeper ones were better, I don't know. It was pretty good for us, as the train took off at 10 pm and we mostly spent our time sleeping. Another suggestion, if you are getting the hard sleeper ticket, do not buy the top one, stick to the bottom or the middle one. Then you'll have enough space to sit down. The gap between the top bed and the ceiling is too narrow for you to sit down. Warning for the claustrophobics out there! I'm a little claustrophobic actually but I still managed to enjoy the whole journey in the compartment.

After spending 12 hours on the train, we arrived the next day around 8. The train station in Huangshan (this one referring to the city) was small and not the modern type. It was surrounded by hills, I kinda felt like we're lost in a small village despite of the many tourists getting off from the train with us.

We've booked our room at an international youth hostel in the downtown part of the city, in fact it was located right in the middle of the walking street of downtown Huangshan, so we took a bus that took us to the downtown. When we arrived at the city it started to look like a real city, there were buildings and some fast food chains. We put our luggage in the room and took some stuffs that we need for the hiking. Then off we went to the Yellow Mountain!

Even though we were already in the city near to HuangShan but we still need another hour to reach the mountain. We rented a car from the hostel to bring us there.

We arrived!

The view after we entered the main entrance.

Great view! And that was just the entrance! Ready to hike?

Well, the hiking did not start right away because we have limited time. Remember we had just arrived at 8, then went to the hotel and another hour journey, so we were probably there around 10. And the park closes at 7 or 8. We had to take the cable car to save time.

Thank God they have cable car so we got to enjoy the breathtaking view without taking our breath, hehe. It really had saved our time and our energy for the real hiking.

After getting off from our cable car ride, we climbed a little further to find this. Everything was so pretty, no filter needed, just like in a fairy tale land. Prepare your legs and your camera, and snap! Indulge your eyes and capture the view forever in your mind.

By looking at the bridge, I knew we still had a lot of climbing to do. Super excited!

Here we were at one of the peaks. Had to take some pictures of course.

Don't fall, folks.

Fairy land mountain range ~ Very pretty ^___^

We went from one peak to another, tried to visit all recommended spots which according to the sources we searched were the best spots. We kept walking and taking pictures. It was really fun and I had to admit quite tiring because we did seriously lots of climbing.

I dunno for how many hours we had been climbing up. And, we realized that we had to start going back down because the cable car was going to close soon. Omo, and that's when our fun and happy and cheerful walking turned into an "Amazing Race". At that very moment, we were like RUN!!! We were racing with time because if we didn't make it to the closest cable car station before they close, we would have had to spend the night on the mountain without any camping preparation and without food supply. And if that was going to happen, I couldn't imagine. The better option was to climb back up to the hotel and rent some tents which I kinda doubted because it was getting dark and we didn't have any flashlights. With our mobile batteries running low, we might lost in the mountain.

Luckily, the Amazing Race spirit of ours drove our adrenalin high, we were running with our might. Our tired legs weren't a great help but we knew we could do it.

TA DA! We caught the very last cable car, just before they closed.
Thank God!