I just returned from a weekend China trip to Huangshan, Xidi and Hongcun. You might be interested in my experiences. First some general comments.
Thank you to everyone who posted materials and advice. Your suggestions were invaluable for me in planning my trip.
Huangshan was more magnificent than I had anticipated—it far exceeded my expectations! I would have enjoyed more than two days there.
The walking/hiking was more strenuous than I had realized. I’m no couch potato but I didn’t go as far as I had planned because it is stairs and more stairs. The only level walking you will do in is the hallway of the hotel.
Devote your energies to hiking at the most dramatic spots. Use the cable car to get you up the mountain rather than spending lots of time ascending on foot.
I speak some Chinese but I’m not fluent by any means. I don’t think I could have done the trip I did without some language ability.
By Chinese standards it was very expensive but I don’t regret a penny.
I was traveling by myself but I was never alone. This isn’t a wilderness experience!
OK, now some details and some tips you might find helpful. I took the overnight train from Nanjing to Tunxi/Huangshan City China tour deals . (Everything I saw, including highway signs, referred to Huangshan Cithy rather than Tunxi.) As we approached our destination, a guy came through the train selling tickets for a bus/coach to Tangkou. If that is your destination, I suspect it would be a good deal to go with him. Quick transfer, comfortable seats, predictable arrangements.
However, I followed ellyse’s advice and headed for the Taiping cable car. As a result, I left the train station to look for a bus to Taiping and ended up on a minibus that sat around waiting to be completely full. In Tangkou they helped me a couple of others make a slick transfer to the Tangkou-Taiping minibus. It seems there are a lot of minibuses on that route, given the number I saw on the trip. It took about an hour to get from Tunxi to Tangkou and another hour or so to Taiping.
I had done a lot of internet research before leaving home. Quite valuable was a map I downloaded from maps-of-china.com with both Chinese and English so I could show people where I wanted to go and they could read the Chinese. At a minimum, have the characters for your key locations written out on paper so you can point. The internet map also showed the main walking routes, while the map I bought was more picturesque. The signage on the mountain, however, was quite detailed and multi-lingual. At times, however, it was helpful to know that Turtle Rock was the direction I wanted to go, even though I had used another reference point as my destination. If you are just walking around and looking, no problem, but I had set out an ambitious plan for just two days.
In Taiping city I was dropped off at a parking lot (no bus station there) about two blocks from the east-west main street where, I assume, one could find the minibus to the cable car station (another 25-30 km away). I ended up negotiating a taxi to the cable car because I was eager to get to my goal of hiking in the summit area. The driver was really nice, showed me where to buy the entrance ticket and the cable car ticket, took me right to my destination.
Suggestion—the cable car holds about 100 people so you want to be next to the windows rather than in the middle. Ellyse recommended this way up because of the great views but I didn’t see as much as I would have liked. Had I realized the situation, I would have hung around and waited to be at the front of the line for the next car rather than near the end of the group for the car I was on. As in most places in China, queuing is an approximate art.
At the top, I was about 15 minutes away from Xihai Hotel where I had a reservation. Given the fact that my friends could not get hotel reservations (hence going by myself) I was worried about overbooking so I checked in at 10:00am. To my surprise they gave me a room right away—maybe gray hair has its advantages? Also I got a room in the main building rather than the annex. Very nice room at the level of Holiday Inn Express or Hampton Inn in the U.S.
Then on to the Xihai scenic area. Terrific! I followed the advice of taking the longer loop whenever I had the opportunity. At the end of the second loop I decided to turn around rather than continuing to the Xihai service area (not quite sure what that is—maybe restaurant/toilets) and on to Brightness Peak China best tours . I had a fabulously clear day so I could see how far it was down to the bottom of the gorge, and I could see that Brightness Peak across the gorge was higher than the spot on which I was standing. No way! I never saw a topographical map so I don’t know the total change in elevation but certainly many hundreds of meters. But like most hiking, the scenery looks quite different when going the other direction so I didn’t regret the decision to retrace my steps (I did take the other side of the loops going back) for 5-6 km total.
My late lunch was a wonderful bowl of noodles with slivers of bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and pork in a rich broth. I don’t think any meal has tasted better! This was at one of the restaurants at the Xihai Hotel—I think I would have enjoyed it even if my thighs were not quivering.
An aside—I liked the location and the facilities of the Xihai better than the Beihai or Shilin Hotels, both of which I looked at briefly. (The breakfast buffet at the Shilin was mediocre in my opinion) Xihai was closer to the trails I wanted to take so not a lot of backtracking. Being closer to the sunrise spot (Beihai or Shilin) was not a big attraction for me.
The next morning I got up but didn’t have a spectacular sunrise. (Note—Xihai Hotel provides parkas in each room for the cold morning, and the path from Xihai to Beihai has lighting so you can find your way easily in the pre-dawn darkness) After breakfast I checked out and headed south past Flying Rock and Turtle Peak toward the Western Steps. Once again, absolutely breathtaking vistas—also breathtaking ascents on some of the steeper stairs. My strong advice is to go down the Western Steps not up. When I arrived at the top of the Jade Screen cable car I descended that way. Total hiking about 7-8 km.
My next goal was to go to the historic Anhui villages. The regional map on the back of bilingual map of Huangshan that I bought at the train station showed a road to the village of Xidi (couldn’t find the characters for Hongcun on that map) so I knew that it was possible to go from Tangkou to Xidi. Because it was now after 12:00 noon (and I knew, thanks to Lonely Planet, that the last bus from Yixian to Tunxi departed at 5:00pm) I decided to splurge for a taxi the whole way, about 50-60km. I did notice, however, that a large board at the parking lot at the base of the cable car had the schedule and prices for buses to all sorts of places, including two departures directly to Yixian. No need to assume that everything must be done in Tangkou.
So the rest of my day was delightful and quite predictable. Got to Xidi in less than an hour, spent several hours walking around and taking photos (although a number of the named Huizhou buildings were not open to visitors and those that were seemed to have been turned into antique shops, making you feel that you ought to buy something). The minibus to Yixian stopped right outside the entrance to Xidi so a quick ride to Yixian. Looking at the highway signs, I inferred that Xidi is further south from Huangshan than Hongcun but they all seem quite close together. Minibus to Tunxi, dinner at Meishi Renjia (thanks again, LP) and a much appreciated foot massage before boarding the overnight train back to Nanjing.
If I had the time, I would spend at least two nights at the summit, plus a full day or more at the villages. I thought that 2 ? hours at Xidi was plenty to see everything there.
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