Yellow Mountain

Hey there followers. Sorry I abandoned you before finishing the blog. I have been so busy since I have been back in the States and I have not had time to finish documenting my adventures.  Tiger Leaping Gorge was my last big trip in China before I left. We did however take one last smaller trip to Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) before our finals. Adam, John Swinford, Bryan, Liz, and I decided last minute that we had do go since it was on our “places we must see” list and we had one free weekend before finals began. Everyone we had talked to had said that Huangshan was the most beautiful mountain of all, and that it was a must see for anyone in or around Shanghai so we were pretty pumped to visit it. Liz was meeting her parents in Beijing that weekend so her plan was to stay with us for one night, hike part of the mountain and then leave and fly out of the Huangshan airport, while the rest of us continued to hike and spend the night on the top of the mountain. So after a 7 hour bus ride to the town of Huangshan, and wandering around the streets looking for our hostel, we finally arrived. This was probably the nicest hostel we have stayed in—it must have been brand new because everything was so clean and nice. Our bathroom was artistically tiled and had one of those modern sink bowls in it which was pretty cool, and the beds had new REAL mattresses for once. They were thick and comfy, unlike the usual hostel mattresses that are like an inch thick and not the most comfortable things ever. So we were all quite excited (after all of the trips we have been on, places we have stayed and complications we have faced it really doesn’t take much to please us). So we all got a pretty good night’s rest which was necessary before we began our hike up Huangshan.

Learning from previous mistakes, we decided not to hike from the bottom of the mountain, and instead take one of the cable cars the majority of the way up. For this mountain in particular most of the trails and hiking areas were at the top anyways. The majority of the hiking part was across the mountain top rather than up it, so it would have been a waste of time to start at the bottom (plus Liz, Bryan and I feared it would be like Emeishan and nobody wanted to do that again!). The cable car ride was beautiful in itself. Everything was so lush and green. The mountains were very odd though, similar to the ones at Huashan (the mountain with the plank walk)- very rock like and jagged looking unlike the mountains at home or at Tiger Leaping Gorge. As we rode up the cable car, we ascended into the clouds. It was quite foggy at the top of the mountain but it was still beautiful. We wandered along the top of the mountain, stopping at various points to take pictures and enjoy the views of the vast mountain range. A few short and light showers occurred while we were walking around, but just as we pulled out our backpack covers and rain jackets it would stop every time. We kept teetering between being too hot and too cold, because it was right at that temperature where it was too warm to wear a jacket but too cool to be without one. Below is a photo of all of us at the top (Of course we couldn’t take pictures without an Asian person asking to be in one with us ) and a photo of the type of terrain at Yellow Mountain.

After a few hours, we decided to head to “Fairy Walking Bridge,” because we had heard that it was one of the coolest places to visit on the mountain. We had to say goodbye to Liz before we began hiking there because she had to get down the mountain and to the airport. So after wishing her a safe flight and a fun weekend with her parents, we headed off in the direction we believed this bridge was. Like many other trails in China, this mountain was horribly marked. We got lost a few times, but finally we made it to the right trail. On our way down to the bridge, we passed a spot marked as “The best view on Huashan,” so we walked over to the viewing area and looked out. The view was pretty spectacular, as you can see from the photos below. We took a few photos and then continued on our way.

After hiking, what seemed to be all the way down the mountain, we finally arrived at the bridge. It was pretty cool. The boys said it should be named lord of the rings bridge because it supposedly looked like a bridge in one of the movies—I clearly didn’t remember those movies well enough to notice.

We hung out by the bridge for a while, took some photos, and made friends with some Chinese hikers who were also there, before attempting to carry on our way down a trail that would eventually loop back to our hotel. Of course, that way was closed though (or so our Chinese friends and the security guard told us) so we ended up having to hike back up the millions of stairs we took to get down to the bridge. We all groaned at this news, but began the trek. It wasn’t nearly as bad as we expected and we made pretty good time back to where we started. We had the option of hiking to a different part of the mountain but we all decided that we were tired and would rather go back to the hotel to shower and eat and hopefully go to sleep early. The reason we planned to stay at this hotel was because it was the closest to the best viewing platforms to watch the sunrise, which was supposed to be spectacular from this mountain. So we obviously were planning on waking up at 5 am to prepare ourselves and find a good spot on the mountain to see the sunrise, which meant we should probably get to bed early. So we headed back to the hotel, took showers and chilled in our rooms for a bit. We finally got up and decided to look for dinner. When we looked outside we realized that it was drizzling and very gloomy. Not good. We checked out our hotels restaurant but decided it was way too expensive, so we went to a different hotel a few mins away. There menu was still expensive but more reasonable than ours, so we decided to stay there. We all ordered noodle bowls and some rice, because the bowls pictured in there menu looked very small. They were definitely not small. My bowl was bigger than my face, but I was hungry so I did not mind. It hit the spot! It was warm and had enough spice to give it good flavor. Definitely not the best noodle bowl I have had, but it got the job done.

By the time we had finished dinner it had begun to pour outside. We all stood at the doorway looking out with hopes that the rain would let up so we could walk back to our hotel. Finally, we decided that the rain was definitely not getting any lighter so we would just sprint back to our hotel. We made it back soaking wet and surprisingly with none of us slipping and falling on our faces. We then looked around for a table to sit at and play cards or something, but the hotel lobby was packed, so we decided to just go back to our rooms and hang out/go to sleep. We made a plan to wake up at around 5 am and see how the weather was. If it looked bad we would go back to sleep, if there seemed to be a chance that it would be clear then we would bundle up and head out to one of the viewing platforms. Well my alarm went off at 5 am, and I begrudgingly rolled out of my warm bed and wandered into the hotel lobby to look out the doors. To no surprise, it was still raining and you could barely see 5 feet in front of the hotel because of the fog. I immediately went back to my bed and texted the boys to tell them there was no way we would see the sunrise and that we should just go back to sleep and meet in the lobby around 8 am. Clearly Bryan and I don’t have the best of luck with mountains and fog (remember the top of Emeishan?). So we all went back to sleep and met up around 8am in the hotel lobby.

It was quickly decided that none of us wanted anything more than to get off the top of the mountain. So this posed the question of what to do for the rest of the day. Luckily we had wifi and iphones to do some research. We stumbled across an advertisement for the Huashan Hot Springs- a relaxing spa with a beautiful view of the mountain. To my surprise, the boys were all about this! So we headed to the nearest cable car and rode down to the base of the mountain where we purchased bus tickets to drive us to the hot springs.

It was misting at the base of the mountain but not raining, luckily for us, so the hot springs would be great. We got to the hot springs around 10 am, but they told us to wait in the lobby for about 30 mins because the springs would not be ready until around 10:30. These are not typical hot springs like ones that pool naturally in rocks; no they just pump the water from the hot springs into individual tiled pools all throughout the grounds of this place like jacuzzis. Each hot spring was infused with a different thing (such as green tea, chrysanthemums, coconut milk, vitamin C, coffee etc) that helped to either detoxify or nourish different parts of your body in different ways.

This is a view of one of the springs. As you can see the place itself was absolutely beautiful. Below is a picture of one of the springs you could relax in and the description of its health benefits.

After a few hours relaxing in the hot springs, we showered and got ready to head back to Shanghai. After a very long bus ride due to tons of unexpected traffic and the long metro ride from the bus station we finally made it back to school. Like all of our trips, I would consider this a successful one– interesting and different as always! Although, if you only had enough time to pick a few trips, I would definitely suggest some of the other trips over this one. If you have the time and money to spend on travel, some of the trips discussed previously in this blog were definitely better. That being said, I still enjoyed this trip and it was a relatively easy and cheap sight which is exactly what we wanted for our last weekend trip. It also meant that we were able to check off pretty much every “place to see” on our list. There were only a few missing for me, but there were so many amazing things I did that were not even on my list and should have been (like all of Vietnam for instance) so I don’t feel bad about it. Anyways, stay posted for my final blog post (sad I know). I promise to wrap it up soon so you can have some closure (and so my mother stops bugging me about it haha).