The mountains of Anhui provence

A foggy mountainside at Huang Shan in Anhui provence.

My friend Thomas and I put dusty and dry Beijing behind us, flying two hours south to Tunxi. (I know I said in a previous entry that I didn't think Beijing was as polluted as I feared it would be, but after seeing the traffic getting to the airport during rush hour, I think I've changed my mind.) At any rate, somehow we didn't expect to see any rain when we landed, but indeed, it was coming down at a steady place, forcing us to dig our rain jackets from deep within our backpacks.

Fortunately the weather today was much better -- Not sunny, but cool and rather foggy -- which was a good thing because we had some climbing to do. You may, as I did, have a picture in your mind of cloud obscured mountains dotted with wind-blown pines sprouting out of crags in the rock. These sorts of motifs are commonly seen on scrolls hanging in Chinese restaurants. And this is exactly the sort of scenery that the mountains of Anhui province have on offer -- it really does exist, and it's absolutely beautiful and breathtaking.

It's also quite exhausting getting to the peaks. It took Thomas and I -- along with three friendly students from Hefei that invited us to join them -- about three hours to climb almost a kilometer vertically to an elevation of approximately 1800 meters. Concrete and stone staircases led us all the way to the top, and about when I started to think I was getting tired of all those stairs we would come across a guy carrying food or water or souvenirs to the shops and hotels located further up that mountain -- some backbreaking work. But when the wind blew off some of the fog, the views were magnificent, and made our efforts worthwhile without a doubt.

There's so much more to tell, but I can't let myself spend my last evening here in Tunxi sitting in front of a computer screen. More tomorrow or the day after from Hefei!