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| Sea of mists |
Ever since I have seen those Chinese ink paintings of impossibly steep mountains and gnarled pines I have wanted to go to Southern China to see the landscapes that inspired them. It turned out that art meticulously copied nature, Chinese painters actually travelled to Huangshan and draw what they saw. The place would be practically inaccessible to humans (I do not consider mountain climbers to be completely human), but over ages, staircases were hewn in raw rock and smooth walkways built, so that 4 people can walk in breadth in most places - totally unlike any mountain hike we have ever seen. It is a strain on your knees, but you could walk in flipflops.
We decided to spend a night on the mountain, for several reasons. One was that it usually rains there, so two days gave us more of a chance to see anything, the other that seeing the sunrise or sunset is a must according all the guidebooks. We were lucky to see the mountain tops rising out of the mists, all of a sudden making clear why a parts of the mountain was called Northern Sea.
Huangshan is considered by Chinese to be one of their top attractions, right there with the Great Wall, but is all but unknown in the West. Even on a weekday, the main paths were teeming with Chinese tourist groups and tourguides with megaphones, but we met only a handful of westerners. Many of the Chinese must have been rural people, because we were repeatedly asked to pose in photographs with them.
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| Spot the odd man out |
Given the popularity it was not strange that the few hotels on the mountain charged five times more than the hotels below. They have to have everything delivered on carriers back - no roads, only the walking paths. The lack of western clients probably also explained that the proudly announced western breakfast at 16 EUR offered the choice of egg or no egg and two kinds of bread, with no butter.
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Much easier than
taking pictures outside |
