Hua Shan
Trip Start
Jun 10, 2008
1
14
20
Trip End
Ongoing
Xi'an,
China
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Friday evening, Alban and I boarded a train to nearby Hua Shan to visit the mountains there, this turned out to be one of the trip's top highlights. We intended to get to the town in time to find a hostel and get a good night's rest before climbing the mountain. So we first found a shuttle bus to get us as close to the hostel as possible. This small bus was very overcrowded with me in a fetal position by the window, and a dozen more people standing in the aisle. Suddenly, someone yelled something and everyone began to duck as if they were afraid about something. Alban and I thought that we were maybe being shot at or something. Why else would everyone duck, right? As we looked for the answer, a lone police car drove by in the opposite direction. They were just concerned about having an overloaded bus. This was very funny to us, because EVERYTHING here is overloaded, and police NEVER pull drivers over for anything. In town, we found a hostel above a restaurant on the main street. It looked pleasant enough on the outside, but the price quoted was just a little more than what we wanted to pay. After bargaining, we pulled the price down to what our very nice hostel in Xi'an had cost us, so expectations were high. Our room had much to be desired, though. The restaurant light glared in through the curtains, the room wasn't very clean, there was no A/C nor even a fan, the bed was as hard as a piece of plywood, the street below sounded like a circus, and the bathroom was a short jaunt from anything--and it was just a ditch. Nevertheless, we thought we would make the most of it and got to bed shortly before nine o'clock. At ten-thirty we still weren't able to fall asleep. The noise and biting bugs were unbearable, but if we blocked out both with the blanket then it was too hot and there was no more padding. Finally, somewhere between one and two in the morning, I fell asleep. The street noise had ceased, the light had turned off, and I was too tired to be uncomfortable. We awoke shortly after 5:00 to start our journey up the mountain. I had a very swollen lip and left eye due to the bugs, and I couldn't use the desperately needed toilet because there was no toilet paper. That was alright, though, because we were going to climb a mountain and nothing could stop us.
That mountain killed us, though. The climb was only a short distance, but there were a solid 7,000 steps between the village and the top, according to Alban's busy counting. We visited four of the five peaks in six hours from top to bottom, and it was a beautiful climb. There were very few westerners, which made it all the more fun. Several people stopped to take photos with the tall white boys. The climb itself, proved treacherous as many of the carved-out stair cases were nearly vertical and still more crowded than a lobster bucket. At the end of the day, we had climbed or descended a well-estimated 18,000 steps! Ridiculous! My legs are a little sore. The only disappointment was not finding what we were looking forward to the most--the cliffside plank walk. This was supposed to the craziest thing on our trip, but we couldn't find it anywhere. You can probably type in Hua Shan in Google and see what we missed out on, you'll be disappointed for us.
Anyway, we got back to beautiful Xi'an a few hours ago and have settled into our new hostel. I am going to sleep in a soft and comfortable bed to prepare for a relaxed day tomorrow before our sleeper car train ride to Beijing at 9:30 tomorrow evening.
G'night.
Comments
Cliffside Plank Walk
I looked up pics of it on google. It's too bad you guys didn't get to see it. It looks both incredibly awesome and incredibly terrifying. I bet people fall off of it occasionally.