Yellow Mountains Huangshan Travel Guide

Planning takes a lot of time and although there’s already a lot of information on the web about the Yellow Mountains, I still spent quite some time – maybe too much – preparing our trip to Huangshan, mainly because the travel guides I found felt incomplete, or at least in my opinion. Hopefully this Yellow Mountains Huangshan Travel Guide will help future Huangshan travellers when planning their trip.

We took the night train from Shanghai Railway Station to Huangshan, which is a nice and relatively cheap way of travelling without losing too much time. We left Shanghai on Friday evening at 20:00 and arrived at our destination at around 7:00 the next morning. Quick tip for those who are travelling by night train: don’t forget to bring ear plugs with you, because you’ll probably be sleeping in a carriage full of snoring people and, unlike at home, you cannot throw pillows or punches at the noise-producing person, hoping this would make the snoring stop. So, ear plugs.

The next step is very easy. The moment you get out off the train station you’re overwhelmed by a horde of bus drivers, taxi drivers, poncho ladies and rikshaws. The easiest and cheapest way is to take the bus to Tangkou Huangshan Front Gate, which costs 20 RMB. Once arrived at the bus station after roughly one hour, you can choose to either walk to one of the cable car stations or take another bus that takes you directly to it in 20 minutes. Because we wanted to save as much time as possible, we decided to pay the 19 RMB ticket for the bus to Ciguang (Mercy Light) Station to take the Yuping Cable Car to Yuping Peak (Jade Screen). This was also the place where we had booked a room in the Youpinglou Hotel for the first night. The cost for the cable car was 90 RMB and the admission fee 230 RMB.

• Jade Screen Hotel (Yupinglou Binguan,玉屏楼宾馆)
• The Welcoming Guest Pine (Yingkesong, 迎客松)
• Suggestion: Celestial Capital (Tiandu Feng, 天都峰)
  We didn’t go to this mountain peak because we thought we wouldn’t have enough time.
• Suggestion: Lotus Peak (Lianhua Feng, 莲花峰)
  This peak was closed when we were there.
• Hundred Step Cloud Ladder (Baibu Yunti,百步云梯)
• White Cloud (Baiyun, 白云)
• Fairy Walking Bridge (Buxian Qiao, 步仙桥)
• Brightness Top (Guangming Ding, 光明顶)

• Jade Screen Hotel (Yupinglou Binguan,玉屏楼宾馆)
• Hundred Step Cloud Ladder (Baibu Yunti,百步云梯)
• Brightness Top (Guangming Ding, 光明顶)
• North Sea Hotel (Beihai Binguan, 北海宾馆)
• Cloud Dispelling Pavilion (Paiyun Ting, 排云亭)
• Purple/Red Cloud Peak (Danxia Feng, 丹霞峰)
• Suggestion: Flying Over Rock (Feilaishi,飞来石)
• Dawn Pavilion (Shuguang Ting, 曙光亭)
• Monkey Watching the Sea (Houzi Guanhai, 猴子观海)
• Suggestion: Lion Peak (Shizi Feng, 狮子峰)
  We wanted to see the sunset from Lion Peak, but because it was closed, we headed back to Cloud Dispelling/Dispersing Pavilion.
• Cloud Dispelling Pavilion (Paiyun Ting, 排云亭)

On the third day we woke up early at 5:30 to go see the sunrise at Monkey Watching the Sea, but unfortunately, we couldn’t see anything else but clouds. Originally the plan was to hike the West Sea Canyon, but because the weather was too bad and because we had seen already most of the important viewing points in the mountains, we decided to spend our last day in Hongcun, a nearby UNESCO listed ancient village.

Spending two days in the Huangshan is enough. During these two days you can see the most notable peaks and places without being too much in a hurry and you will also be more lucky if one day appears to be too cloudy. It would be a pity if you’re only staying for one day, and then this day turns out to be a misty one, causing you to see nothing of the actual mountains. Three days however would be ideal to hike all trails. Also, the cable cars already close at 17:00 or even earlier, which means you have to either miss the sunset or walk all the way down back to the city in the dark if you don’t want to miss this moment. So in this case, one day in the Yellow Mountains is definitely not enough.

This brings us to tip n°2: check the cable car timetables!

Don’t take too much with you, the climb up the mountains is already heavy enough! However, don’t take too little food with you. Make sure you bring enough high calorie snacks for the necessary energy!

Try to write down or find a map with the name of the scenic areas in Chinese characters and in Pinyin, because the English translations often varie. Also, some road signs are only in Chinese characters.

Because Huangshan is an important park for fauna and flora, some trails and mountain peaks are often closed for maintenance or to allow nature to grow back what was lost due to tourism.

Wear comfortable clothes and wear multiple layers. At this point I still don’t understand why I saw so many Chinese girls wearing heels. I mean, you’re climbing a mountain?

If you see a travel guide followed by his group, run and try being ahead of them. This is the only thing that really bothered us in Huangshan. The guides, followed by a horde of same-hat-or-same-coat-wearing people, were all shouting through a microphone with the sole purpose of making everyone deaf. Also, they were often giving explanations when there was actually nothing to see, but people were still taking pictures of the white nothingness in front of them. Plus, you really don’t need a guide, it’s way nicer to explore Huangshan by yourself!

If it is too cloudy at times, be patient and maybe wait for about 15 minutes. The clouds can come and go at any time. And in that brief moment when it clears up, take as many pictures as possible because sometimes it lasts for only two minutes. But no worries, the resonating ohs and ahs of other visitors will let you know that something beautiful is awaiting you!

It might come in handy to bring your student card with you! It can save you a lot of money.

If you like taking pictures, take enough memory cards and a spare battery with you.

Yupinglou Hotel: this was a very nice and modern hotel that provided everything you needed, but ofcourse this is what we paid for. It was quite expensive, as was the Beihai Hotel, because we wanted a private room instead of a matress and sleeping bag in a big dormitory. The view from our room was awesome, even though the view is amazingly beautiful basically everywhere you look. The food was very good, which was definitely a nice surprise after a long day of hiking. Besides the food being expensive, they asked us for a 500 RMB key deposit. Seriously, 70 euros for a stupid key card?! That’s the price we paid for our train tickets to and from Huangshan, for two people! Anyway, nobody told us that and we didn’t have that much cash with us, so luckily we could pay only 100 RMB, but still, that’s just a ridiculous amount of money for such a stupid card. Finally, the Yupinglou Hotel was perfectly located considering the route we had planned. We arrived there first thing in the morning so we could drop off all of our excess baggage and even though we had to hike back for about one hour and half in the evening from Brightness Top, it was a nice hotel to return to. I was very impressed with how they built such a nice hotel so high in the mountains where transportation is not an option.

Beihai Hotel: the location of this hotel is both a blessing and a curse, to put it very dramatically. It’s perfectly located because it’s in the centre of several different viewing points, such as Lion Peak, Cloud Dispelling Pavilion and Xihai Canyon. Moreover, the Yungu Cable Car is only 30 minutes walking distance away from the hotel, which was perfect for us because after checking out, we immediately left the Yellow Mountains to go to Hongcun. The downside is that the area of the second hotel looked a bit too much like a civilized little village with multiple hotels, restaurants, basketball court, hospital, post office, police station and China Mobile shop in its surroundings. It felt too much as if we were in a village, not in the middle of nowhere in the mountains. It’s all about the full experience, you know! Besides the location, there were some things that bothered us: the heating didn’t work (and it gets cold in the mountains at night!), the hairdryer worked for only 20 seconds at a time and then it started smoking and the bathtub water drained almost instantly. But then again, you’re in the most amazingly beautiful setting, the hotel shouldn’t be a priority and you shouldn’t expect too much luxury.

But if you want so save on food, B.Y.O.N. (Bring Your Own Noodles, hot water dispensers are everywhere in China)