The Yellow Mountains, Huangshan!

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Yellow mountains day! So exciting!

I am impressed that I did not wake up super anxious about today's hike but instead I was excited. I woke up super early to take the 6:20am bus up to the mountains with my Chinese roommate.

We got out of the hostel, crossed the bridge and waited for the bus; while waiting a lady driving one of those little tiny trucks dropped a case full of tiny fruit (smaller than tiny clementines) and had to stop and pick them up. When we saw her we immediately started helping her and she kept saying "xie xie" (thank you), then some other tourists from the hostel came and started helping as well! We did good! :)

The bus came to the corner and picked us up, I slept the whole 2 hours until we reached the bus stopped. Once at the bus stop it was madness! at least 20-30 buses filled with people, all signs written in Chinese, everybody speaking Chinese, I was so glad to have a Chinese speaking girl with me!

Well, it turns out that my Chinese friend did not have much common sense so it was pretty much me guiding her through my observations of people flow and figuring out the different steps. First, we had to figure out which gate we wanted to start our hike from. In the ticket counter you could see 3 names of temples to go to in English but you couldn't figure out which one you needed to go to since there was no map in English.

Go figure!

It was all in Chinese but since I had a map I got from a blog on my phone I was able to figure it out which gate we needed to get to my hotel and point it to her so we could get tickets.

After the confusing process of getting tickets we had to go and find our bus which thankfully wasn’t all that complicated!

We got on the bus and rode up hill for at least an hour in super windy streets! Once we got dropped off we had to walk and buy our entrance ticket and cable car.

So… there are 2 things Chinese people like: 1. Cable cars, and 2. Stairs!

The hike is supposed to start at the bottom and take 3 hours to get to a “middle” kind of point; well, Chinese are too lazy to do the hike so they put in a cable car! I was glad for it because it saved me 3 hours of up hill work carrying my supplies for the night.

The queue for the cable car was long but only took 30 minutes! Online I had seen posts with the line being so so so so long it went out of the building and down the road and could take 3 hours or more!!!

Up we went from the Yungu Temple cable car!

Once we arrived at the top of course it was madness, people screaming, pushing, and everybody wanted to see whatever there was to see first!... You really have to exercise patience here!

The whole mountains had very good signage so it was easy to follow the trails and get where you wanted! It also helped to have the map on the phone to just double check that I was doing it right!

The views from the top are simply amazing! I was in awe of what i was seeing... So Pretty!

Here I am at the mushroom Pavilion

We walked up up up stairs for an hour and a half to two hours until we reached the first hotel, which meant that I was close to mine!

It was impressive to see how all the materials and things needed up the hill are carried by porters, check it out:

We kept walking for another 20 mins and finally reached my hotel, the Xihai hotel! I told my roommate that I was going to check in and leave my water and would be back out.

I spent 5 minutes doing the whole process and when I came out my friend was gone, I think she got lost in translation! I felt sad because I didn't want her to think that because I got to my hotel now I didn't want to be with her anymore. I looked and looked for her but I couldn't find her so I gave up and kept doing the walk on my own.

I kept walking towards the Cloud-dispelling pavilion but took a right turn with stairs going steep up hill, the path was empty so why not?!?! Then I decided to take an even steeper up hill path, I wasn't looking at my map but I ended up in the Purple Cloud peak!

The walk up was hard core up hill, very steep for about 30 mins, when I got to the top I saw a gate with a lock!!! NOOOOO!!!! I wondered if that was why I saw no one going up, I thought it was because it was hard and steep and couldn't believe I missed the sign where it said it was close!

Luckily, right next to the locked gate was a little path... yeay!

Oh my!!! It was SO BEAUTIFUL!

It was all empty, I had the mountain to myself, it had no one, I just sat there and enjoyed the moment, and thought about how lucky I am to be able to be in this journey!

I enjoyed the here and now sitting at the top of the hill overlooking the mountains and seeing the cloud move slowly through the sky.

I made my way down after a good 30-40 mins up there taking in the views and went to the cloud-dispelling pavilion and down the 1st ring and did a little bit of the 2nd ring.

The views kept getting better and better and the path steeper, and narrower!

This part of the "hike" was a lot of fun, there were rock formations that you could go under, tunnels to go through, and even bridges! and the views were spectacular!

At a rest stop

After a couple of hours I decided I needed to start walking up so I could make back on time up for the sunset and rest a little!

I went to my hotel to charge my phone and my energy for a little bit, when I went out to see the sunset I saw this:

In the 45 mins I went in the fog came and we couldn't see anything anymore!

I didn't lose hope so I went back on the trail and hoped for the best!

I am sad to say that there wasn't a sunset! it was waaaaayyy too cloudly! What a disappointment!

That night I went back to my hotel and slept like a baby!

The next morning I was up at 4:30am and made my way to Stone Monkey Watching the Sea viewpoint to see the sunrise!

I got there probably by 5am in the complete darkness and there was already a whole lot of people waiting!!! Sat there for what seemed HOURS to wait for the very famous Huangshan sunrise!

Was it nice? Yes! Was it amazing? Not really! some of the charm goes away when there are 300 people on top of each other on a rock with selfie sticks all around you!

When I had enough of the sunrise I walked back down to the Beihai hotel and went through the Gongyang Peak, and reached the Bright top.

This part of the hike was very long and very much uphill! It was also very boring! Me walking though trees the whole time going up... I was so tired!

The view from the Bright top was beautiful... but also scary... I could see what was ahead... THE ONE HUNDRED LADDERS!!!

These are people going up and down that huge rock... super duper steep!

People at the bright top be like:

ahhh... I can see the cable car between the mountains... I must be close!

I walked for seven hours and I had the thought of keep going since it was still early but decided that I have had enough so I walked to the cable car..

Now, back to Tunxi! :)

About Post Author

Andrea

Hi! It's me... Andrea! In 2016 I decided to drop everything and take a year to enrich my life and travel around the world. It turns out the world is just too big for 12 months! Still on the road and sharing my experience as a solo female traveler around the globe!