A Weekend in Huangshan

This past weekend I went to Huangshan with a couple of friends. We had an amazing time and really lucked out on the weather!

On Friday evening, we took the last bus from Hangzhou to Huangshan park, which takes about 4 hours. We arrived about 9:30 and checked into the Kunlun hostel. We were very pleasantly surprised. It was really nice. We got a 3-bed room all to ourselves and pretty much immediately went to sleep. Well, we would have if we hadn't been kept up by the guy in the lobby playing guitar and singing into the microphone (pretty badly). 

The next morning, we walked out of our hostel to find this view! Crazy. That's where we were headed. 

After getting some breakfast, we walked towards the mountain. We thought we could walk into the park, but a security guard thankfully let us know it was 10km to the entrance! We walked back a bit and got the bus to the trail head and park entrance.

We got off the bus and immediately headed for the trail. We started at about 10 or 10:15 and climbed up the mountain, which means climbing up stairs the whole time. But pretty much immediately the views were incredible.

With many breaks, we eventually made it to the top in just under three hours. There was a pretty stellar view to greet us at the top.

From there, we headed to our hotel. We stayed at the Beihai Hotel 北海宾馆. It was more expensive than I would have liked to pay for a hostel room, but it was incredibly well located and actually a really nice hotel. We ate lunch outside the hotel on some grass in the sun. After lunch, we all decided we needed a nap. We slept for about half and hour and then managed to get up to go on a sunset walk.

We decided to head towards Bright Top. It said it takes an hour to get there from our hotel, but without our big backpacks, it only took us about half an hour or forty-five minutes. The sunset wasn't very exciting, but we had a really nice walk.

I think I was asleep by 9pm that evening. I was so exhausted from walking up so many stairs and from being in the sun all day. 

The next morning we woke up at 4:30 to catch the sunset. We went to Lion Peak, which was only 10-20 minutes from our hotel. We brought our coffee and slowly watched the sun rise and the clouds blow towards the canyon. This was definitely the highlight of the trip. It was a beautiful morning. 

After watching the sunrise, we headed back to the hotel to eat breakfast. By this time, pretty much the whole hotel was awake. It's definitely not the place to stay if you want to sleep in. I reckon anyone who stays in the park is staying in the park to watch the sunrise and get an early start on the park before all other tourists come. 

After breakfast, we just headed straight back to the town to get the bus back to Hangzhou. We were down the mountain by 9. Only then did we find out the only bus that runs after 8am is at 14:15... 

We went to the bus station to buy our tickets then we walked to the hostel we stayed in on Friday night. We had coffee there and ate the remainder of our rations we brought with us to go up the mountain (I recommend bringing water and food, because it's pretty expensive once you're in the park). 

We had a nice time there, then we went to get lunch. We had a pretty uneventful journey back. No one stayed awake the whole time on the bus back (no surprise there). 

We had such a lovely weekend. It's the first time I've traveled in China (or maybe ever) where nothing really went wrong. We had great weather, no transportation problems, very nice accommodation, packed enough food, and good times all around. Also Huangshan was even more beautiful than I was expecting. This was a super easy weekend trip from Hangzhou (or Shanghai). I highly recommend it!