Yellow Mountain (I)

Last year, I was living in Shanghai when Danny and I made a small trip to Huangshan - 'Yellow Mountain'.  On a map, it doesn't look too far away from Shanghai but boy was it a journey!  A journey that I will never forget for all the right reasons.

I grew up with a houseful of Chinese landscape paintings of swirly clouds in mountain tops, but little did I realise that places like that truly existed until seeing Huangshan.  We went before I had bought a good camera, but hopefully the majestic scenery and post-editing will make up for my humble 'point and shoot' photography skills.

From Shanghai, we boarded on a 13-hour overnight train ride to Tunxi and then took a local bus to get from Tunxi to Tangkou - a small village near the Huangshan scenic area.  We passed some beautiful scenery along the way but I wouldn't know - I have a knack for passing out asleep on long-distance transport!

The matching Red Army hats were completely necessary.

In Tangkou, a little Chinese man called Mr Hu hustled us back to his hotel and fed us fried rice and tea for breakfast before driving us to the East Sea Gate at the base of the mountain.

Armed with an out-of-scale pictorial map of Huangshan, we set off to tackle this whopper of a mountain.

You should have seen the fear in my eyes.

We came across every kind of terrain on the ascent.  First, was a bamboo forest.

Bamboo and snow - such an unusual combination!

Next up, waterfalls of all shapes and sizes.

This one is known as the Thousand-Feet Spring.

Then it started to rain so we decided it would be much easier to admire the scenery from a cable car.  (Besides, who doesn't love a good short cut?!)

You know those magical Chinese landscape paintings that I was talking about earlier? Well, the view from our cable car window started to look exactly like one of those.

I felt like Monkey Magic dancing on cloud puffs from peak to peak.

But when we got off the cable car, I came back to reality as we put on our hideous ponchos to protect us from the rain.

Such a breathtaking view!

It was definitely worth the chilly February weather and rain that we had to endure.  But by this stage, we were ready to take our cold and damp selves to a nice hotel for the night.

To be continued ...