The bus dropped me off on the street at 4:30AM. The streets were empty and no taxis. I was on my own. The bus driver said walk one direction, but I wanted to know where I was so I opened up my computer where I had Google Earth cached. I had just crossed a river, so I was able to match that up and get my location. Next for my destination, I had a Chinese map of the area since I don’t have any English map (even in my guidebook), but I couldn’t get it to match up until now. I found out the Chinese map reversed the North-South directions.
I walked to the entrance of the mountain (photos), but it didn’t actually open until 6:30AM. Today was an expensive day since the entrance fees and even a fee to check my luggage added up to $33. And this was the minimum, I could have done the cable car too.
After getting on the bus, I noticed the driver was handing out vomit bags to motion sick Chinese passengers. At the end of the bus, I noticed a couple of the passengers throw their used bag over the side of the mountain. I also noticed I took the wrong bus. I took the one to the cable car when I wanted to walk. It took a long time to get a bus to get me in the right direction.
Finally at about 10:00AM I got to the path to start climbing the mountain. It is so foggy at this mountain that stairs disappear into the mists when you look up or down. It was a pretty hard walk up, but I made it and saw the gilded hall at the peak of the mountain.
After finishing everything, I walked to the bus station. I didn’t actually know where it was, but I saw some buses and just followed them. The bus station was the smallest one I’ve seen in China. There was no ticket office and the station seemed to be run by three women knitting in the lobby. Finally they got me on a bus to Xiangfan, one of the larger towns in the area.
In Xiangfan, I wanted to take a train. I didn’t have any map of this city, but I think I saw the train station before the bus stopped. After running away from some people, I got to the train station and got my ticket for my night train.