Our plans to go directly to Shanghai from Song Shan didn’t quite materialise. We had to get a bus to Zhengzhou and from there a fast train to Shanghai, but when we tried to buy train tickets in Zhenghzhou we were told that everything for that day had been sold out. This meant we had to overnight in Zhengzhou and catch the 08:23 fast train to Shanghai the next morning.

We found a hotel opposite the train station, did a bit of walking around and then had a quiet dinner in our hotel restaurant.

Thursday morning we were at the train station at 08:00 and were pleasantly surprised with the train. We had reservations for soft seats and the ticket price was well worth it (an absolute fortune!) - the seats were very comfortable with loads of leg room, the people on the train was actually quiet and we even got a free bottle of water! We did the 1000km journey in 7 painless hours.

After another 3 bus journeys we finally made it to the next sacred Taoist mountain, Song Shan - most famous for the Shaolin Monastery as it is believed that Gongfu (or Kungfu to the Westerners) was created here by the monks.

We arrived in Dengfeng, the village at the foot of the mountain, around 16:00 Sunday afternoon and took a taxi to a hotel we found in the ever faithful Lonely Planet.

We were tired after another full day of bus travelling, so after chilling out for a bit, we went to find something to eat. This turned out to be impossible as there are no proper restaurants in town - only very dodgy looking little canteens which we don’t feel quiet strong enough for yet.. In the end we discovered a Dico’s (very similar to Kentucky Fried Chicken) and decided to go for the fast food option.

On Monday we felt the need for a lazy, doing-nothing day before tackling the mountain the next morning. After breakfast at 13:00 we went for a stroll and spent 2 hours in an internet cafe. Then went back for an afternoon nap before going to good old Dico’s again for dinner.

Tuesday morning was supposed to be us and the holy mountain, but when the alarm clock went off at 06:30 it was pouring down outside. We had hoped to do the 15km trek up the mountain and even took a taxi to the starting point. But halfway there we had to turn around as the weather was just getting worse. Very dissapointed we went back to the hotel but in the end enjoyed another relaxing day with no sightseeing at all. It is now our 3rd day in a row without taking a single photo, but we think the break is doing us, and our readers, a lot of good.

This has now put an end to our quest to conquer the sacred 5 Taoist and 4 Buddhist mountains in China, but we are still determined to give the remaing ones a run for their money.

One of the girls at the hostel in Luoyang was very helpful and told us that it is possible to go to Guoliangcun in only 2 bus trips (instead of 3 as per our Lonely Planet). We thought this would actually shorten the journey, but we were very wrong..

We got on the first bus at about 08:30 in Luoyang and after a 5 hour very bumpy, shaky, hot and sweaty ride (not to mention the neverending horn honking - apparently a necessity in Chinese driving) we made it to Huixian. As this part of the trip was only supposed to take maximum 2 hours, we were already fedup at this stage. Here Marizanne desperately had to go to the toilet and made a dash for the public toilet. It was in a little building far away from the main bus station building and as soon as she entered, she knew why.. We have seen many “strange” toilets on our trip sofar, but this was officially the worse toilet experience of her life (bad enough to even make it on the blog)!

The next bus journey to our final destination, Guoliangcun, was over in 2 and a half hours (thankfully!). We got dropped off about 3km from the village and had to take a taxi. The taxi driver took us to a hotel, but we decided to find something else - partly because the room was dirty with no bathroom, but mainly because one of the staff walked and killed 2 chickens right there on the street in front of us!

We checked into a small family-run hotel down the street and went exploring. Guoliangcun is a traditional, ancient village with an amazing setting in the mountains. We walked through the little town and then down to the man-made tunnel in the side of a huge mountain. In previous times the village could only be reached via a very steep staircase (the “Heaven Stairs”) but later they decided to make a tunnel through the mountain by hand. It is quiet impressive and apparently used in many Chinese movies.

There were no restaurants in the village but our hotel served food on a little veranda on the first floor. They had something of an English menu written on a small piece of paper (copied word for word out of the Lonely Planet). As we were waiting for the food to arrive, a young Chinese girl came to talk to us and even gave us each a fruit juice and a plate of dried fruits and nuts from the mountains in that area. She could speak a little english and was just to happy to practice.

We had only planned to stay 1 night here, so the next morning we caught a taxi to the next village, Nanping, where we got on various buses - Nanping to Huixian to Zhengzhou and the final change our next destination, Song Shan mountain.

If you can’t see the slideshow above click here.

After our holy mountain experience, we caught a bus back to Xian where we had pre-booked train tickets (again hard sleepers for the 5 hour journey) to Luoyang.

Arriving in Luoyang we checked in at the Mingyuan Hostel and had a very relaxing evening (partly due to the fact that our legs were so stiff we could hardly walk!).

There is not much to do and see in town, except for the Longmen Caves about 13km away. We had a very nice lay-inn this morning and at around 14:00 took a local bus to the caves, south of the city.

The Longmen Grottoes are one of China’s few surviving masterpieces of Buddhist rock carvings. The site is absolutely huge with dozens of caves - the Ancestor Worshipping Temple definately the highlight of the day. This section was carved between 672 and 675 AD and contains the best works of art with three-dimensional figures and a central 17m-high Buddha.

It is a great day-out, except for the somewhat extortionate entrance fee and all the steps! Usually we don’t really mind steps, but after the Hua Shan experience, we are still a bit wobbly.

We ended the day with a very nice dinner (seated in hanging, swinging chairs) and tomorrow morning we are catching the 08:00 bus to Guoliangcun, an ancient village about 150km away.

If you can’t see the slideshow above click here.

On Tuesday we had a lazy morning at the hostel in Xian and after getting up fairly late, we spent a bit of time on the internet (free at the hostel) before making our way to the long-haul bus station for a local 2 hour bus to Hua Shan.

The bus stopped at a little hotel in the village and everyone on the bus (all Chinese tourists) went directly inside where the bus driver started a lecture on the trek up the mountain (this being the only reason people visit the village). We were offered accommodation and as the price was very competitive we checked in straight away. The room was very basic (and not the cleanest we’ve seen), but with great mountain views on the top floor.

In preparation for the big hike the next day, we had a quiet dinner in a local restaurant across the road from the hotel and picked up some food supplies at a little corner shop. We met an American couple who were planning on climbing the mountain at night to make it to the East peak for sunrise. We learnt that most of the Chinese do this trek at night and the idea is to start at around 23:00, which is definately the cooler option, and after watching the sunrise from the peak, make their way down.

Hua Shan is one of the 5 sacred Taoist mountains in China with 5 peaks - north, south, east, west and central. From town it is a 6km hike to the north peak from where a route towards the south leads to a cluster of peaks - the east peak being the first on a circuit of about 5km covering the remaining peaks. 

We started the climb at 08:15 and the first 4km were relatively tough (just a few steps, but serious inclines) and it just got tougher from there.. We reached the north peak after 3 hours and then started making our way further towards the higher peaks. The south peak is the highest at 2160m, but all 3 rear peaks afford great views. We were blessed with the most amazing day - blue skies and almost no wind, even at the very top. This was the second day since we’ve been in China, that we’ve experienced such beautiful weather and from the top of the peaks we could literally see for miles.

This is by far the most scenic and hectic climb we have ever done. The route is very strenuous with a lot of near-vertical steps, several narrow and almost vertical “bottle-neck” sections and a few places where the trail runs along ridges with impressive sheer cliffs on either side. “The scenery is simply spectacular with twisted pine trees clinging to ledges, knife-blade ridges and vast, transcendent panoramas of green muontains and counryside strecthing away to the horizon.” (quoted from the Lonely Planet)

At 16:00, after 8 hours of climbing, we reached the final peak and then realised we still had around 8km of serious downhill steps to burn through before the end of the day. Originally we had planned to take the cable car down from the north peak, but to our dismay it was not running that day! The vast majority of people do the entire circuit over a 2-day period, spending the night in one of the small hotels on top of the mountain, but with the cable car not operating and pre-booked train tickets the next day, we had to do it all in 1 go.

At this stage our legs were very tired, our knees killing us and most of our snacks already finished.. As expected the way down was very hectic on the legs but we made it down to the village at around 19:15, which made for a total of exactly 11 hours.

As we walked into town, we went straight to the previous night’s restaurant and placed the same order (it was very nice, but also partly because it was the easiest thing to order from the Chinese menu).

Hua Shan was an awesome experience and definately made it to our top 10 list!

If you can’t see the slideshow above click here.

We took the overnight  from Taiyuan to Xian and were booked on “hard sleepers”, which basically means it is a very hard bunk - 6 beds per compartment with no door. We got the 2 bottom beds, but decided to give it to 2 old men that shared the compartment with us, because it is quiet difficult to get to the middle and top beds (very close to each other with very little space).

The train arrived in Xian at 09:30 on Sunday morning and it was absolutely pouring down. We took a bus straight to the Shuyuan Hostel - we got a flyer at a previous hostel. The hostel is very nice with open-air courtyards to sit and chill, a little restaurant/cafe and a funky bar (where everyone gets a free beer every night). The staff speaks very good English are very helpful in terms of travel info.

After having a cup of coffee and getting out of our soaked clothes, we decided to make our way to the famous Army of Terracotta Warriors as it is all indoors. We took a bus from the train station and were there in about 1 hour. We started with the smallest pit (of the 3) containing 72 warriors and horses and then moved on to the next pit with about 1300 warriors. You cannot get close to them, but in Pit 2 they had a few of the soldiers in glass boxes to examine up close. The largest pit (Pit 1) was the most impressive with almost 6000 warriors and horses standing in rows. It was amazing to see this life-size army and even more amazing to think that it took 700 000 people more than 40 years to built the tomb and the warriors for the Emperor Qin Shi Huang more than 2000 years ago. It is believed that the Emperor expected his rule to continue after death and wanted to take a whole army with him in his tomb.

After a very interesting afternoon we made our way back to town and had a proper Western-style pizza for dinner.

Xian is one of the few cities in China where the old city walls are still standing. We were very lucky that the hostel is located right next to the South Gate in the city wall. The next morning we visited the Big Goose Pagoda and the Da Ci’en Temple. After strolling the grounds (unfortunately the Pagoda was closed so we couldn’t go up the tower), we spent the afternoon walking through Xian’s main shopping street. Our suitcases are packed to their max, so we couldn’t give in to the temptations..

At 21:00 we went back to the Big Goose Pagoda to see the largest fountain and music show in Asia on the main square. It was beautiful and very impressive, except that we almost got soaked a few times and had to try to keep the camera dry! There were hundreds and hundreds of people and afterwards we litterally had to fight our way onto the bus again. The Chinese take queing and pushing to the next level - if you don’t shove people out the way with force, you don’t get anywhere!

After 2 days in Xian, we are about to take the bus to Hua Shan for another sacred mountain experience.

Click here for the Terracotta Army.

If you can’t see the slideshow above click here.

On Saturday morning we woke up to perfect blue skies! This was a big thing as it was the first time that we’ve seen actual rays of sunlight since we arrived in China. It was an absolutely perfect day and it was great to have the whole morning to explore a handful of selected temples in the village of Wutai Shan before having to take the bus back to Taiyuan.

We started with the main Tayuan temple and it’s distinctive white stupa. As you’ll notice from our photos, the enormous stupa can be seen from everywhere in the valley and was in fact visible from the trail the we did up the North Peak the previous day - more than 20km away.

The Tayuan temple is the main attraction in the village and is also the point through which most pilgrims pass (to spin the massive prayer wheels at the base) before making their way up the North Peak. We obviously did it in the opposite order, but we think we were blessed anyhow.

From there we popped into a smaller temple on the way to Xiantong temple as there was a live opera show being performed. The massive Xiantong temple holds, amongst a huge amount of attractions, a 15-faced, thousand-armed statue of Bodhisattva in the Manjusri hall. They were in the middle of a service when we arrived and we had the chance to see hundreds of monks perform ritualistic prayers and offerings.

Moving on past the 5m tall, 50 tonne golden Buddha statue we exited the temple and, after passing through a few smaller ones, eventually got to the top of Bodhisattva Peak which was our last temple for the day. It’s reached via a final 108 steps, the amount of beads on the Buddhist rosary.

It was noon and we had to get back to the hotel to gather our bits and get on a bus. The supposed 4-hour ride from Taiyuan took 6 hours on the way here so we had to leave plenty of spare time. To our delight the return trip was a comparatively swift 3 hours for some reason, but it meant that we had about 5 hours to kill before our overnight train to Xi’an. We spent some time in an internet cafe and had a lovely dinner before heading to the train station.

If you can’t see the slideshow above click here.

Wutai Shan, or ‘The 5 Terraced Mountains’, is Buddhism’s sacred northern range and one of the 4 holy Buddhist mountains in China.

We are staying in the valley town of Taihuai surrounded by forested slopes leading up to the 5 peaks. The town is full of temples and monastaries - there are an absolute huge amount of them!

It was almost impossible to get any information on hiking in the area from our hotel, so we decided to just head for the bus station to see if there was any way to get to the North Terrace Peak. Before even getting there a local minibus stopped and offered us a ride to the Hongmen Rock Gate - at a price of course, but very reasonable. From there we were able to walk the rest of the way to the peak. This 9km stretch of relatively easy road took us just under 2 hours to reach the 3058m summit.

Before we even got to the top the weather started rolling in and the peak was completely cloud covered and very windy. We didn’t linger and after making the obligatory rock-pile as proof of our ‘massive achievement’ we started making our way down.

About 1km from the end of the trail some locals offered us a ride back to town - roughly 20km away. With it only being 2pm we tought it would be a nice extra to scale the somewhat smaller Dailuo Peak as an after-thought. It’s 1148 steps up to the monastery start right on the edge of town and we made it to the top in a record 25min.

With jelly-legs we strolled the confines of the small monastery and temple. It was a very peaceful scene with Buddhist Monks wondering around the grounds, burning incense and keeping the Chinese tourists in check. Since we got here we’ve only seen 2 other white faces - we love it and are almost dissappointed each time we do ;) We sat around and spent about half hour just people watching and taking photos of unsuspecting Monks.

We’re about to upload some more photos and will then sample more of the local cuisine (not including the chicken head & kidney bbq’d scewers on offer at street stalls!).

If you can’t see the slideshow above click here.

After spending the night in Ji’nan, we took the 11:00 train and arrived in Shijiazhuang late afternoon. We checked into a little hotel and had an early night in anticipation of our daytrip to Zhending.

When we woke up the next morning, it was raining heavily and continued to do so until the afternoon. This curbed our plans of visiting Zhending (an ancient city) and we just spent the day in Shijiazhuang.

Early the next morning we took a train to Taiyuan. We were very lucky to get soft sleepers (in our own compartment) for this 5 hour journey, but only got hard seats on the next leg to Pingyao. Hard seats generally mean cattle class with literally dozens of people standing in the corridor. This was quite a challenge as we got on the train when it was already full and with our big suitcases it was very hard making our way through the masses to our seats (with hundreds of eyes staring at us again).

On arrival in Pingyao we forgot all our sorrows as we went through the main city gate. Pingyao is a beautiful little village with only red lanterns to light the streets. We checked into the Yamen Hostel and we absolutely loved it. It is built in an old residence with 3 beautiful courtyards. They even had a nice restaurant where we had a lovely meal.

The next morning we walked around town to discover many hidden alleys where women were washing clothes or cooking food. It was a real experience and definately a must-see town. We ended the day with a typical Pingyao meal - braised local beef, fried dumplings, some potato dish made with sugar and home made noodles with lots of chillies.

We tried to update the website last night, but the internet at the hostel was not working and it is very hard to find internet cafes in small villages.

We were very sad to leave the picturesque town when we got on a local bus back to Taiyuan this morning. A 1.5 hour journey turned out to be closer to 3 hours and we had to make our way to another bus station for our next destination. In Taiyuan we got on a bus to Wutai Shan - one of the 4 sacred Buddhist mountains in China. Again, what was supposed to be 4 hours on the bus, turned out to be more than 6 hours - the toughest bus journey of our trip so far. About 100km of the way was under construction, so the surfaces of the roads were just mud and huge holes everywhere. To add insult to injury, everyone was chain-smoking on the bus!

Well, we finally made it to the holy mountain and have just checked in to a hotel (cannot pronounce or spell the name). We’re planning on doing a hike up the mountian tomorrow, but at this stage we haven’t been able to find any information. Hopefully we’ll have better luck in the morning.

If you can’t see the slideshow above click here.

Taking a taxi from the Tai’an train station we checked into the Jixiang Hotel, right opposite the Dai Temple in the heart of town. The hotel is modest, to say the least, with your standard hole-in-the-ground toilet (which is also the shower) and previous patrons hair all over the bedding. As always the bed was the normal half-inch thick matress on a hard-board base and novel bean-bag pillows.. tough on the old ears, and hips. We’re getting old!

That night we decided to brave a local eatery just up the road. We each ordered a main meal which we soon realised was not quite neccessary as this was enough for at least 4 people. The food was quite good, but we learnt our lesson again to not order just any old chicken dish as they often simply chop the whole bird into shreds - bones, skin & all and toss it in a broth. It’s impossible to work your way through to the meaty bits with chopsticks!

The only reason for coming to Tai’an was to climb sacred mount Tai Shan - the most revered of China’s 5 sacred Taoist peaks with imperial sacrifices offered to heaven and earth from it’s summit. It’s is said that if you climb to the peak that you will live to a 100 years.

Early Friday morning we set out from our hotel to walk the 2km to the start of the mountain trail at the north end of town. The peak is 1545m above sea level with a total climbing distance of 7.5km from base to summit and a measly 6,600 steps to grind your way through. We started the assent at about 9:40 and reached the Midway Gate to Heaven (1/2 way up) at 11:15 - 20 min earlier than expected - our faces a strange shade of purple. We got out our packed lunch here and rested to catch our breath.

Being one of China’s major tourist attractions (the May-holiday weekend attracts almost 200,000 visitors) there were thousands of people on the trail but we were the only foreigners in sight. In fact since we left Beijing 2 days ago we’ve seen a total of 3 other white people. Needless to say we were as big an attraction to the Chinese tourists as the mountain itself. Everywhere people stop and stare, point and laugh or try to make conversation. At this stage Marizanne is just behind Diana as the most photographed woman on earth; taking into consideration the 95 million people in this, relatively small, province alone.

We reached the summit just after 14:00. On the top of the mountain is an array of temples, hotels and shops with people everywhere. Apart from walking up, there is also the option of taking a minibus & cable-car to the top, so there are lots of fresh faces about. It was extremely humid and the whole mountain was cloud covered and shrouded in a misty haze, which gave it a mystical feel.

The entire hike was an amazing experience, albeit a pretty tough one. Dispite the exhuberant price, we opted for the easy way out and took the cable-car down.

We were absolutely knackered and enjoyed the evening with instant noodles and sweetcorn sausages in our hotel room. We had noticed an informal snooker club in the alley behind the hotel, and after dinner Jan decided to test the locals’ skills. He managed to get a few games, but of course these guys were much better than they looked.

Taking a ‘rest-day’ we made our way back to Ji’nan on the train this afternoon and will be moving on to Shijiazhuang in the morning.

If you can’t see the slideshow above click here.