Every Cloud…

Tunxi – We begin this morning in Tunxi having breakfast in the cafe-bar associated with our hotel. Tonight we will be staying 1843m up Huangshan Mountain in the enigmatically named White Cloud Hotel.

Tunxi to Tangkou – We leave the hotel and negotiate with a taxi driver to take us the 45minute journey north to the town of Tangkou at the base of the mountain. This is where Lonely Planet has reliably informed us that there are a number of Internet cafes that will store our big bags overnight whilst we go up the mountain. The taxi driver is very friendly but does not know the cafes that we are looking for and drops us off in a petrol station.

Tangkou to Tangkou – Tangkou is teaming with people and cars. The noise is insufferable. It looks like a major evacuation plan has just been put into place and no-one has a clue what to do. Everyone seems to be visitors and no-one can help us. Finally we find a knowledgeable local who explains we are in Tangkouzhen and not Tankou. He will take us to Tankou and the cafe we want in his car, for a fee. We agree and soon are at the other end of a long and winding street in the older part of town. He drops us outside of a supermarket that has a blue sign that Lonely planet says is the internet cafe. We are concerned that It does not look like a cafe. Our white cloud hotel is looking ever more greyer.

Tangkou to the bus – it turns out that the Internet cafe is above the supermarket. And what an Internet cafe it is! It’s enormous. There must be 100 very old PCs all churning away in there, and about two people using them. The lady behind the counter looks excited when we arrive, maybe we are here to use the other 98 machines. She becomes more downcast when we try to explain we only want to leave our bags and go up the mountain. What follows is a long, unclear conversation in Chinese with lots of sweeping actions and bag removing to illustrate that we want to leave our bags, go up the mountain today, come back down the mountain tomorrow and collect the bags. Ultimately it is to no avail. The lady appears not to have a bag store. Perhaps she converted the bag store into an extra fifty computer stations a few years back. Bet she’s regretting that now!

We leave the supermarket/computer graveyard and head along the street. Mark spots a sign in English saying English Service Western Cuisine Free Information – we head in and a man says ‘wait a moment’ and goes out the back and shouts for someone. A few minutes later a small breathless lady appears, apologising for being out of breath. She speaks excellent English and we explain we want to leave our bags. She says of course. She gets us a map and explains where we need to go to get the bus to the mountain and writes down some key Chinese character phrases for us to use.

Bus to the Cable Car – We leave the restaurant, cross the river, go under the big bridge, up the stairs by the side of the bridge and arrive is broken road next to a group of people. They say this is not where the bus to the mountain goes from. We walk up the road and a bus coming the other way stops. The driver says he is not the bus that goes to the mountain. We carry on along the road and stand at what looks like a bus lay-by. A local comes up to us and stares, and then says this is not where the bus to the mountain goes from. We carry on further and a group of elderly people accost us with their bags of small kiwi fruit. One of them forces us to try one. We ask how much for a bag, one says 5 yuan, the other says 3, and then rapidly inflates his price. By this time more old folk have arrived, we have a tin of something unidentifiable thrust in our face, maybe we want this too? We escape, they do not know where the bus to the mountain goes from. We see a bus station in the distance. It is the bus to the mountain. We buy our ticket and join a queue and are soon pulled out of it to join a select group of 8 in a tiny van that will take us to the cable car.

Cable Car to the Mountain – The journey away from Tangkou is enlightening. The small van is quiet and the views as we rise become amazing. We are looking down a valley, stretching out further and further ahead of us. The sky is clear and blue, it is a beautiful sight and very exciting. We arrive at the top amidst a series of buses all parked up. We get out and make our way round them, to be faced with the start of a queue. It moves quickly and becomes clear that it is really just milling people at this point, they have not quite organised themselves into a queue yet. we pass the souvenir and pot noodle shacks and soon the real queue becomes clear, it is the mother of all queues and puts the Shanghai Pudong TV tower queue to shame. We buy our mountain and cable car tickets and join the back of it. We join the Chinese tradition of snacking as we jostle our way to the head of the line, we sense the metaphorical clouds of gloom amassing around us as we are battered, barged and beaten for an hour to reach the cable car entry and the 5km cable car journey up to the mountain.

Mountain to the Mountain (circular walk)- The view from the cable car is amazing but the view at the top is horrific. We alight the car and step out of the station to pick our way through masses of people taking photos of themselves in front of the building. Some have even laid down blankets and are picnicking in the exit walkway from the station. We push our way through realising where the billion Chinese that move about the country for the National Day holiday have gone – they have come to the mountain! We need to find the White Cloud Hotel and consult the map that the lady in the bag-restaurant had sold us. It appears to be nearby, but the map is not the clearest and we seem to have to navigate by using the feature peaks, all of which have fantastic names. We head off from White Goose Ridge Cable Station, pass Stalagmite Peak, on to A Flower Grown Out of a Writing Brush Rock, Beginning to Believe Peak, Black Tiger Pine and then… White Goose Ridge Cable Station. The metaphorical clouds are positively threatening now!

Mountain to White Clouds Hotel – We ask a man with a name badge where the hotel is and he points us in a new direction. We head off, jostling through the crowds that move continually up and down the narrow paved tracks across the mountain. If seen from above they look like ants crawling over a mound of twigs. The difference is the noise, it’s an inescapable racket of squeaks and squawks, shouts and screams. People have sat down anywhere to snack as well, the crunching of food as you step through someone’s picnic is audible. The mountain is a nightmare, the view and scenery invisible from the relentless bombardment on all of your other senses. We fight our way up a hill towards Xingzhi Pavilion and trample left at Donghai Gate. We are swept along in a sea of people southwards towards Turtle Peak before bailing out to move in the general direction to A Mystical Peak Flying from Afar. Finally we arrive at the White Clouds Hotel.

Oasis – Do you remember the reception area of the Crossroads Motel from the seventies, well we have arrived at it. Somehow it had been transported to a mountain in China, decked out with a few extra red Chinese lanterns and made fully operational. We are checked in and told where our bedroom is. We find the room, it has a view of a bank and undergrowth about 3m from the window but it faces away from the crowds. This is heaven, it’s quiet (relatively) compared to the disaster occurring outside and has clean spotless white duvets, simple furnishings and soft standard lamp lighting. The bathroom leaves a little to be desired but we don’t care. It’s taken six hours from Tunxi to get here through the most horrific scenes ever. We are now safe, and feel all the more safer for the discovery of two gas mask boxes in the bedside cabinet. We grab a beer, buy some Chinese Garibaldi’s from the hotel shop and have a nap for an hour to settle our nerves.

Sunset – We awake feeling refreshed and ready to do battle once more. Heading out of the hotel we note that a campsite appears to have sprung up from nowhere in the small paved square in front of the hotel. The crowds have abated slightly, but not by much and the noise is still there. We make our way up past views of Stone Column Peak and Stone Bad Peak and reach a lookout area near to Immortal Solarize Boots. We are surprised that it is relatively quiet, the Chinese seeming to prefer to snake along in one continuous moving line along the paths than to step off them onto the rocks and potentially see a view. Checking the compass we realise our vantage point also looks west, and should get a good view of sunset. We realise we have just under an hour to wait and cross our fingers that our secluded haven will remain unpopulated until the sun goes down.

…has a Silver Lining! – The crowds continue to wind past us just a few feet away as the sun sinks into the landscape. The layers of distant mountains silhouette against each other as the white light gradually fades to yellow, orange and then a deep pink making us both look like we are sunburnt. For a moment as the sun goes down the noise and racket seems to reduce as all are focused on the last rays of sunlight. Then, as it sinks below the horizon, seemingly cutting a circular golden hole through the land itself the noises come back, yelling and shouting as the Chinese collectively realise that the mountains can echo and the louder they scream, the louder they hear themselves.

We return to the hotel as the temperature starts to plummet and pass the increasingly large encampment outside. The lobby is now filled with refugees from the cold as is the bar area. We go downstairs to the restaurant and order some rice and a chicken dish. Both are excellent and we eat it all up, the exercise of the day has given us both healthy appetites. Fully satisfied and having finally had a good experience on the mountain we retire to bed, contemplating that the White Clouds Hotel has after all been the silver lining to our day.

Coming Next… – The return journey!

Liam – Huangshan Mountain – 01 October 2012