"Hua Shan - when you have seen this mountain you need visit no other". Jacob saw this on a travel poster somewhere in China. It is of course not quite the case, but it is fabulously beautiful nonetheless. It is another place with scenery that is a bit different than any other place I have seen. These are granite mountains - huge expanses of granite with small trees and other bits of greenery hanging on for dear life. Some emperor a thousand or so years ago wanted to visit the sacred mountain, so they hacked pathways and stairways all over - up the mountain and between the five different peaks. I would have hated to be either one of the stonemasons or (heaven forbid he decided to do this - the bearers of his litter). I wouldn't like to see it on a busy day, though. I feel horror when I think of what it would be like with thousands of tourists on top. Especially Chinese tourist who push all the time (apparently there is a campaign to train the tourists before the olympics next year and they all get stiff lectures from their guides on etiquette). I could just imagine myself or one of the children being nudged off the precarious paths.
It is possible to walk up to the top from the village below (if you follow the link I gave you it says it takes 10 hours to get up and between the peaks - these would be an absolutely gruelling 10 hours). Luckily for us there is a bus to the Austrian built cablecar. When you are in the cable car, you just pray that it is also serviced regularly by Austrians, or at least someone who knows what they are doing. It is the steepest cablecar I have ever seen and the pure granite doesn't make for lots of trees below you. There are some, but not so you get any false sense of security from them. You are painfully aware that you are hanging on by a thread (albeit an inch thick metal thread).
There are all these old men carrying loads up the mountain. One had two watermelons as well as a crate of drinks. They suspend two loads on either end of a pole and carry the pole on their shoulder. They all looked very old, but I expect it is like the Nepali porters. If you asked their age, you may be surprised how young they are because carrying heavy loads up steep mountains every day seems to take a lot of years off the end of your life. I am not sure how much they make from carrying their loads up, but I just hope beer and watermelon are really expensive on the far peaks.
From the cable car you can walk to the other peaks of the mountain. We explored the peak near the cablecar and went halfway to the second peak before we had the mutiny. Yesterday it was Heather's turn. If we had had more time, we would have probably spent a night up at the top and explored the peaks for another day. When we came to China, I thought we had a lot of time, but now we are having to be really stingy with the itenerary and feel we are running around and only brushing the surface. We could have easily spent another few weeks here to do everything we are finding we want to do. Some people seem to be trying to do China in two weeks which seems really crazy to me now.
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