Now when most people think of Xi'an they probably think of The Terracotta Army, or the walled city and huge Pagoda. During our three days in Xi'an we did spend a day at the Terracotta Army museum, and we spent a day in the city, but our first day there was spent exploring the Hua Shan sacred mountain. One hundred and twenty kilometres out of Xi'an and one of only five sacred mountains in China, this is an adventure and one I highly recommend.
If you decide to visit Hua Shan, which I hope you do, Xi'an North station located around ten kilometres out of the city centre and accessible via Line 2 of the Metro, is the place to go. Xi'an North operates high speed trains only with a long list of destinations and over thirty lines running. It is huge! It is like an airport terminal in that you have to wait in the lounge until your train is called, and then you have to board at the correct gate. It is quite spread out and we had to do a bit of a run to the gate in a slight state of panic. You may also have to pass through airport style security, so allow a good twenty minutes to half an hour before your train. We had ten minutes and it was fraught.
The tickets: £5.45 each. Bargain!
Leaving the station.
They very kindly tell you how fast you're going.
So after a very pleasant ride in the restaurant carriage, eating TUC crackers and drinking lime water - the only things we could decipher from the breakfast trolley - we had arrived at Hua Shan Bei (Hua Shan North station). From there you are likely to be hounded by taxi drivers, but there are free buses shuttling to the mountain, so you can tell the taxi drivers 'no, no, no,' even when they tell you, 'bus, no, no,' because the bus is free. Yes!
The bus journey takes around 15 minutes and drops you by a massive roundabout with a backdrop of the Hua Shan mountain and no discernible way to cross the road. Hooray!
Bus drop.
Once across the road you are welcomed to the historical site with a fabulous view of the mountain, a visitor's centre and a map that will probably confuse the life out of you, but don't worry because The Sarky Traveller is here to break it down for you.
- Entrance to the National Park itself is 180RMB (£18) per person. There are student discounts if you have a relevant card. This payment only gets you into the area. In order to explore you need to take a bus to the base of the mountain where you then have options for your trip.
- There are two different cable car entries to take you to the top: North Cable Car and West Cable Car.
- They each require a bus journey to get to.
- The bus journey to North Cable Car is 20 minutes and costs 20RMB (£2) each.
- The bus journey to West Cable Car takes 40 minutes and costs 40RMB (£4) each.
- There is little English spoken here, even in the Visitor's Centre, so it's best to be prepared before you go, which of course we weren't as we had only read a few passages about it in guidebooks and online, and were totally confused by the map.
- From the drop off at North Cable Car, you have the option to hike up to North Peak, which takes around 3-5 hours and requires about 1100metres vertical climb in 6kms. Not for the faint hearted or unfit. There are two different hikes, the one mentioned above and then one with only steps called Soldier's way, which has some 80 degree steps and can be very dangerous depending on the weather.
- There are also hiking options from the West Cable Car station.
- The North Cable Car costs 80 RMB (£8) one way and the journey takes around ten minutes. North Peak itself stands at a height of 1614.9 metres.
- The West Cable Car costs 140 RMB (£14) one way and takes over twenty minutes. West Peak itself stands at a height of 2082.6 metres.
I strongly recommend taking the West Cable Car. It is more expensive, takes longer in both bus journeys and the cable car ride itself, but..........
- It saves your legs in a lot of ways.
- It also opens you up to more routes and allows to you to access more of the mountain, quicker.
- If you take the North Cable Car, you have a lot of uphill to climb once off at the other end, and if you want to continue to any of the other four peaks, you're talking hours of walking and lots of height gain.
- If you go up the West Peak first and make your way around to the North Peak for your descent, then you get to ride both cable cars and both bus routes. And you manage to comfortably see three of the five peaks in just a few short hours.
Obviously, if you have multiple days to explore and are not partaking in the art of speed tourism, then there are lodgings up there and you can stay on the mountain. You also have the option of hiking up and hiking down, but you still need to take the bus to the bottom.
There really is something for everyone here. And with Hua Shan being a sacred mountain, pilgrimage happens all year round, no matter the weather, and so there is always a steady influx of visitors on every peak and walkway. Take care, especially where there are large crowds. Take your time and don't be pressured into moving too fast. You are a long way up and it's a long way down.
So, as I keep harping on about, any sane person would definitely take the route we did - which was a complete fluke and it was only as the day progressed that we realised what a stellar decision we had made - starting with the longer bus journey through the mountains and up to the start of the West Peak Cable Car. Though, I should mention, if you have even a slight fear of heights, you will need to keep your eyes closed for most of the twenty minute cable car journey.
There really is something for everyone here. And with Hua Shan being a sacred mountain, pilgrimage happens all year round, no matter the weather, and so there is always a steady influx of visitors on every peak and walkway. Take care, especially where there are large crowds. Take your time and don't be pressured into moving too fast. You are a long way up and it's a long way down.
So, as I keep harping on about, any sane person would definitely take the route we did - which was a complete fluke and it was only as the day progressed that we realised what a stellar decision we had made - starting with the longer bus journey through the mountains and up to the start of the West Peak Cable Car. Though, I should mention, if you have even a slight fear of heights, you will need to keep your eyes closed for most of the twenty minute cable car journey.
Bus Drop for West Peak trail and Cable Car
They love their steps and gates. They really make you work for this.
The Sarky Traveller having a few 'arrrrgh' moments. It's bloody high.
Once up at the top we were greeted with snow and our first short hike up to West Peak. There are lots of useful signs, information plaques and maps up there. There are translations into English, and they also show distances and height gain to and from the different trails and peaks. This is really good for realising how much you can do in a short time and creating your Hua Shan plan.
Snow.
Information and slightly less confusing maps.
Heading on up to West Peak, via this lovely staircase. Oh and you have to pass through a Temple, restaurant and lodging house, until you finally get the view.
Icy little Dragons.
Loving the icicles.
An icy sea. Our view from West Peak. Wow! You just can't fathom how high you are.
Quality sign: No watching when walking.
Helpful distance and time chart to help you plan your day.
After West Peak we followed the trail to South Peak, which is the highest point on the mountain at 2154.9 metres. There are a lot of steps along this route, just as a heads up, but there are little places to stop and rest along the way, and plenty of photo opportunities.
At the alchemy furnace.
The tree at South Peak.
On a clearer day you will of course see further and have more of a perspective of just how high up you are, but there was something so beautifully misleading about those hovering high clouds, like you had passed from one world up into the next, and they were the floor of one and the ceiling of another. Truly mesmerising. I think in a way I was quite glad you couldn't see all the way to the bottom; the clouds sheltered me from the truth.
On the way down from South Peak, there are lots of steep steps. You pass through the South Heavenly Gate and you pass by the entry to the Plank Road in the Sky - only for the extremists and those who like to walk on planks strapped to a mountain over 2000 metres up. I am not one of them. Sorry. Plus speed tourism didn't exactly allow us that luxury. Aww shame. You can also ring a bell out over the precipice for a small donation.
Ring the Bell.
Walk the Plank. This is tame, it gets worse, I've seen the photographs.
We had definitely earned a lunch break, and there are various places to eat dotted around the peaks of the mountain, though of course not all of them were open in November in the snow. We didn't really have a clue what was available or in the end what we'd actually ordered, but it was food and energy and some of it was hot. The saviour of the day was the little kiosk that sold chocolate. Yay! As China is not a country of sweet tooth's, we had been slightly lacking in sweet things, but a bar of chocolate up that mountain was like a oasis in the desert.
We realised that if we were going to get down to North Peak it was going to take us another ninety minutes - at least - and so we made the decision to skip East and Central peaks, in order to give us plenty of time for the trip down, as the plan was to get back into Xi'an in enough time to have a nice meal and a wander by night.
Now this is where you really need your wits about you. North Peak is much lower than West where we started, so it involves a lot of down climb and some of it is sheer and dangerous. The flow of people traffic was definitely a lot heavier here, so you will have to wait on some staircases for people to come up first, or vice versa. Sometimes there are separate routes for those going up or down. Please follow the signs, they are there to help and to decrease the chance of injury.
We saw a lot of elderly folk that had taken the North Cable Car, as we were coming down, and they were so hopeful that they were already at the top, yet there was still so far to go. I can't express just how many steps there are! (Take West to North. Take West to North.)
The locks lining the way.
Sheer!
That's how you get stuff up a mountain. Wow.
Sword anyone?
Yes those are some of the many steps, and no the angle is not exaggerated.
A definite WTF moment. As my exercise DVD says, 'it might hurt, but you'll have a nice bum.' Ay, I should think so after all those sodding steps. Thankfully we were going down and not up.
As you wind your way down you will pass through the Dulong Temple, Riyue Rock, the Sanyuan cave, and the beast of all ladders: the Sky Ladder.
Dulong Temple
The Sky Ladder. Hold on to those chains.
It feels like you're never going to make it, like there is always some new obstacle to obstruct you and delay you, but I promise if you keep following the signs you will eventually reach North Peak, and then you are not too far from the Cable Car, and your way down off of this fantastic but exhausting mountain.
North Peak. Hoorah!
It's a challenge, it's an adventure and it's one of only five sacred mountains in China. I highly recommend Hua Shan as an excursion if you are around the Xi'an area, and it actually trumps the Terracotta Army for me, but that's just personal preference. It is probably the most expensive thing we did throughout our entire China trip, but it was well worth it. (For both cable cars, both buses and the pass for the mountain it cost us £46 each - 460RMB.)
Goodbye Hua Shan. Taking the North Cable Car down.
Once you have made your way down to the Cable Car and bus, be aware that the buses make stops on the way back. We were unaware of this, jumped off and then found ourselves lost, but luckily in the hands of Google Maps. Stay on until the Visitor's Centre and then you can take the bus back to the station. It waits by the roundabout where you arrived earlier. There are also buses that go straight back to Xi'an from in front of the Visitor's Centre, but they are very confusing and seem to keep no particular timetable. They tend to just leave when full, so you can be waiting for some time, and of course they take considerably longer than the high speed train. When we were trying to get back even the locals were confused, so we had no chance.
If you are getting the super-fast train back, please make sure you booked it in advance when you purchased your outward ticket. We didn't, due to not knowing how long we would take up the mountain, and when we made it back to the station they had no space on trains for 3 hours. Needless to say, it took us about that long to get back to Xi'an centre and our dinner date was off. Instead we settled for dinner and cocktails in the hostel with some light reading.
A very tired Sarky Traveller with a well earned Mojito!
I really hope you opt for the Hua Shan mountain excursion. It is a truly unique experience and is definitely one of my highlights of China.
Join me next time for a battle of the canal towns: Nanjing Vs Suzhou.
Until then, Merry run up to Christmas.
The Sarky Traveller
