After a bit of a struggle with the language at check in, the assistant manager showed us to our room. The room was pretty grotty, with a bit of musty smell and it obviously had had damp issues at some point as some of the wallpaper was peeling off, but we thought hey ho, we didn't expect to be spending too long here anyway, we had a mountain to climb! We headed into town for dinner and took the opportunity to check out Ancient Street, which is a single road of ancient buildings and although sadly they have been occupied by thousands of tourist shops, they were still quite pretty and there was a general exciting buzz in the air. We took the opportunity to gather supplies for the next days excursion and stocked up on water and snacks for the trail.
The next day we woke at around 6am, we knew that it was going to be tough to see much of the mountain in a single day and wanted to start early, especially as it was over 65km away and we were getting a public bus there and back. So we headed downstairs to get a taxi to the bus station, but there was no one at reception and as the hotel was out of the way, no taxis just happen to pass by. Before we knew it a local in a stripey top was enquiring in Mandarin if we were trying to get a taxi and after several attempts to mime the wheels on the bus go round and round, we managed to secure a place in his car to take us (hopefully) to the bus station. 20 minutes later he dropped us off on a dirt road in the middle of no-where...
Aha! We cried after spying a small 10 seater bus that probably drove off the manufacturing line in 1957, "That looks like it could be a bus station!" and after more miming and gesturing and games of charades from all parties, we finally realised that the small triangle one of the men at the counter was making with his hands probably was in reference to the mountain. So we jumped on the tiny old bus, found a seat at the back and settled down for drive in the country. An hour and a half into the drive, the bus started stopping at random places and dropped some people off, and new ones got on, cramming into the tiny space in the bus. The local Chinese gentleman next to me patted my thigh and for an hour or so seemed to find it extremely amusing that my legs were considerably longer than his. With all this going on, Nikala was now in a bit of a panic that we were in fact not on the right bus at all and even if we were, she was worrying we wouldn't get off at the right stop and whiz right past the mountain, ending up in some backwater village with no chance to return. But I assured her that her fears were unfounded and luckily on the other side of the friendly leg stroker, I spied someone with a rucksack and a map of what I thought to be the Yellow mountain. He must be going where we are going I pointed out. So armed with that knowledge we got off the bus when he did, which proved to be a good idea, because we were there at the foot of the Yellow mountain. Just a short shuttle bus to the cable car was all that was left before we were walking those precarious looking pathways we had been dreaming about.
After negotiating the right one of the 4 shuttle buses available, we arrived at the cable car station and unfortunately so had half of China. The queue was immense and although with some enterprising work by Nikala and I, we managed to skip a 3rd of it by attaching ourselves to a group of Germans - incidentally the only other westerners we had seen in the last 48 hours - we still had to wait for 3 hours before actually getting on the cable car, once on however the trip up was amazing.
The views on the mountain were amazing, even though the clouds were low, it felt almost magical seeing the distant mountains peeking through. It would have been absolutely delightful, but we just hadn't been prepared for the sheer quantity of people, nor the noise they made. It was far from the peaceful tranquility we had been anticipating. Our guide in Shanghai had also forewarned us that we might attract a little attention from some of the Chinese here, as many of them have never seen westerners, and she wasn't wrong. Almost every 10 steps we took someone wanted to have their photo taken with us and whilst it was amusing at first we were soon tired of it, one family detained us for a good 20 minutes, pulling more and more relatives previously hidden in the surrounding foliage for a neverending stream of photos. Finally after one particularly intimate photo when a girl decided to drape herself around Nikala, stopping just short of becoming conjoined twins, we had had enough. Realising that we simply didn't have enough time to negotiate the people clogged pathways we never made it to the high points or the particularly narrow points that we had so dearly wanted to see, and putting our heads down we turned around to make the long climb back to the cable car station, aware that we still had to discover where to get the bus back to the city.
There are hotels and restaurants on the mountain and the only way to get the goods to them is for these porters to carry them. All the way up the 1000's of stairs.
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