I think the majority of this entry is best viewed through the video clips and photos of the day....
Basically...we got up at 2am (another last minute panic by the leader), piled into mini vans and got dropped off at the cable car station, in the dark, and the rain, and the wind. THERE WAS NO-ONE THERE.........FINALLY..WE ACHIEVED THE CHINESE GOAL OF BEING FIRST..........so the group leaders set about organising us to be the first in every queue - so that we could prevent others being first as well as being the first to buy tickets. we waited until 430 when the office opened and after a little scramble, the selected people purchased all the necessary tickets to enter and we were off....
first up the mountain so there we were in the pitch black, once we arrived at the top we were left to our own devices and so we ended up in the most bizarre situation of being on our own at the top of a chinese mountain in the dark, trying to find the path to the peak to watch the sunrise... THERE WAS NO SUNRISE so it was all a waste of time (although we learnt later that others who came later waited 5 hours in the queue for the cable car) so maybe not. but we stood in the wind and the cloud hoping for a glimpse of sun. By this time the group had caught up with us and ut was a least light, but we ditched them to explore the walks around the top for ourselves and ended up having a lovely time, we climbed through clouds and peaks, occasionally glimpsed views but most of the time we were in a fog blanket that made it very eerie.
we were delerious from exhaustion, but fruit and chocolate breaks (and a short sleep on top of a peak) kept us going; we managed to stumble into a the valley path that was below th clouds, and we walked for a few hours until we came to a point in the path that was too terrifying to continue down...so we turned back...and it started to rain we got back to the cable car and faced a lose lose situation - wait for three hours in a queue to go down, or walk for three hours in the rain to the bottom. we opted for the cable car as we got to be under cover, but my shoes were so drenched the water squished between my toes everytime i took a step. It was like a cattle market - everyone was shoving and pushing (the chinese hate to queue) and they had to have guards at every turn of the snaking queue to prevent queue jumpers - there were some spectacular fights with people being dragged out by their clothes!
As i stood at the beginning of that queue i had the feeling that i couldn't possible imagine a time when i wouldn't be queueing and i would be warm and dry, and it was an incredibly slow, shuffle forward, shuffle forward, turn a corner and another room of people snake, kind of wait. But time didn;t stop so eventually we were back at the hotel, warm and dry, we got instant noodles from the shop, ate them wrapped in a blanket and slept from 8pm until the next morning. More thumbnails ...
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Huangshan Hotels
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