I am trying to squeeze in as much travel as I can before leaving China. As part of that plan was the Huangshan trip. Huangshan is such a stunning place.
My Austrian friend and I took the train to Huangshan. The train was very impressive, very fancy! Chinese are so organzied everywhere, even in train stations. The train stations have waiting rooms and gates like the airports!
Reaching Huangshan, we had to take a mini bus to the town of Tangkou, which is at the foot of the mountain. I used my amazing Mandarin skills to somehow get us to the town - ofcourse thats an exaggeration, because the bus goes only to Tangkou and I didnt understand most of what the conductor said!
Getting off at Tangkou, we were accosted by Mr.Cheng, whose English was amazing with a very strong British accent. And what do you know, he has never been outside China. He has taught himself English - with a British accent! Anyway, he owned a restaurant and provided travel planning services to confused foreigners like us. He tried hard to convince us to change our reserved hotel to the one he was suggesting. But he gave us some good advice on what to do and we followed his advice.
So the first day we just had time to go to some beautiful waterfalls near the mountain.
And it seems 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon' was shot in this place. So in a flash of divine martial art inspiration, I was able to practice my hidden kung fu bamboo flying skills! :)
But the interesting part was how dead the town was when we came back around 7pm. This was a typical Chinese tourist town during off-season. Everyone had their dinner at the usual time of 6pm and the town went dead after that except for few foreigners like us wandering around wondering where the hell was everyone!
Then came the next day - the big day. Huangshan is this huge moutain, with multiple peaks, the highest being at 6000 feet. The entrance is at around 1500 feet. So now, as usual, chinese style, you get an option to hike the 4500 feet up or zoom up in a cable car. And they also had a easy eastern steps and a tougher western steps to reach the peak. We being the brave, veteran hikers decided to hike up through the western steps. Again the Chinese are so organized that they have built stairs all the way up. Hah, we think, this should be a breeze of a hike. Just 4500 feet, that too with stairs built into the rock face. Ofcourse, if it were so easy, Huangshan wouldnt be rated as one of the 5 best mountains in China. Though there are stairs, its pretty steep and goes through some precarious sections. We walked through some scary sections where the side dropped straight down 2000 feet. One tumble and you could find yourself tumbling a long, very long way down.
The most humiliating part of the hike was seeing the porters carry some ridiculously heavy load up the steps. They carry supplies to the hotels and shops that are at the top of the mountain. The load should be atleast 200 pounds and these guys carry it up the mountain. It was an eye opener for me. All I do everyday is sit in front of a computer all day and complain that my ergonomic chair is not set to the correct height or the correct inclination! And these guys carry 200 pounds of stuff up the mountain every single day!
Some awesome sights...
with Lulu, a chinese girl we met on the hike... 
sticking my foot out the ledge to show a sense of the height... some 2000 feet drop!
on a wooden bridge with atleast a 500 foot drop below...
see these steps? it goes straight down to the base below... some 1000 feet of straight down stairs... fancy tripping in these steps?! :)
Back to the mountain... so after 8 kms and 4500 feet of huffing and puffing up some beautiful but scary sections of the hike, we reached the peak. As usual, the hike had its share of photo shoots with Chinese people, who were fascinated to see two foreigners. Ohh I forgot to mention the unique sight we two were. My friend is this 6.6 feet tall European and I am this 5.5 feet short Asian. So you could imagine the contrasting sight we presented! :)
The peak was so beautiful. It was a sunny but very foggy and breezy day. This meant that in the 30 minutes we were at the peak we witnessed a montage of views. The fog would move in and we couldnt see anything but a snow white blanket surrounding us. Then suddenly the fog bank would move away and we could see the other peaks far away. It was indeed a stunning sight.
By now we were beat, we were so happy to take the cable car back down. We then went to some Ming dynasty ancient village before heading back to the train station.
We saw some kid feeding the ducks with potato chips and the comment from her mom was something like, "Better she feeds the ducks with chips instead of she finishing off the whole bag!"... Now it doesnt sound so bad feeding the ducks with chips, does it?! 
Notice the buoys below? Those seem to be the ancient Chinese buoys.. but dont know for a fact.
Beautiful sunset!
Ohh, look at the below picture and can you see a bird hovering over the water??!!
huhahahaha! 6 months in China and all I can show for it is my improved chopstick skills! I definitely need to get a life! :)
