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Published: April 3rd 2012
I love it when nothing goes according to plan. Today, what could go wrong, did indeed go wrong. I have frost bitten fingers and blisters to prove it ! I am typing this with my elbow.
We set off for the short drive to Taishan at noon. We'd all decided to take the bus and cable car to the top and then walk the 7000+ steps down. Little did we know that the rest of China shared the same plan. It was, after all, the start of the Tomb Sweeping Holidays. We reached the misty top and took pictures and hunkered down on onion pancakes whilst Cao Li nibbled a cucumber. All of a sudden the cold front moved in from Siberia, and after a couple of hours at the top, we decided that the cable car down was the better option. I must say this is the first time I have queued in the clouds. The queue was supposed to be 150m long, but a whole freezing hour later, whispers of the cable car being shut down due to strong winds caused a mini stampede of about a hundred thousand Chinese rushing down the 7,000 steps. It took us
2 hours to get down, Sinclair stopping for pot noodles on the way down. We finally reached the bottom and our cars at 6:30pm. It is only Day 3, and what was supposed to be the "support vehicle", a Toyota Landcruiser, failed to start it's engine. Fortunately we'd parked on the bridge of a hill, so the team got out and pushed.
Anyway, not a good sign that the support car breaks down and we havn't even gone off-road yet !
20 minutes later we arrived for dinner at a Mushroom Hotpot restaurant, which was actually pretty amazing. We ordered 10 different kinds of mushrooms, many of which looked extremely poisonous. If you don't see any more blogs, you'll know why....
Tomorrow, 9am, we are off to Beijing !
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ElyseandPete
Wanderlusting Winter
Weather
Last night after 9pm strong winds, light rain and a light thunder storm hit Hangzhou, it was quite strange.