STAIRWAY TO HELL

Ok, our second excursion was basically a baaad day. In fact, it went from bad to worse. It took us 3 hours just to leave Xi'an, due to problems with bus changes, lack of bus seats, and general chaotic (dis)organisation. We were trying to get to Hua Shan, one of Taoism's 5 sacred mountains. It has 5 peaks, which are said to symbolise the petals of a flower, and we were going to hike up all of them in 5 hours... apparently. Having enjoyed our hike along The Great Wall a few days previously, we were really looking forward to exerting ourselves again.

After about 4 hours since we'd been picked up, we arrived at Hua Shan village. We were led into a hotel and told to 'wait a moment' whilst everyone else on our bus (about 40 unfriendly Chinese tourists) was herded into another room 'to buy Chinese medicine for the hike'. 20 mins later we decided to investigate and, after walking through the medecine shop and out the other side, found everyone having a sit-down lunch in the restaurant. Very thoughtfully, we guessed, they'd assumed we wouldn't want any Chinese food (and to an extent they were right, it was still a bit early for lunch). So, we sat and waited for everyone to finish and eventually made it up the mountain, via bus & cable car, by 1pm.

This is where we got to the 'worse' part. The whole hike was a combination of cement and rock steps and pathways, which could've been okay if it hadn't been for the hundreds and hundreds of spitting, belching, screaming & yelling (so they could hear their echoes) Chinese tourists. Not to mention the teenage girls with their portable stereos. We're not exaggerating, it was a living nightmare of touristic proportions. Even all of this might've been bearable, if we'd been able to walk faster to get away, but you had to shuffle along the whole way due to the sheer number of people up on the mountain. We only just managed 3 of the 5 peaks before heading back down to the village (we were close to breaking point) and then of course had to wait the remaining 2 hours for everyone to return. Oh and did we mention that the weather was really bad, so we couldn't see any of the stunning views? Roll on tomorrow...