We spent a day before heading up to the mountain, touring some of the local villages with a local guide, one of the villages was where the movie 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon' was filmed (they are pretty proud about that and didn't fail to tell us!) The little villages were very charming with lots of history from the Ming and Qing Dynasties. So here are a few pics...
here is a pic taken from one of the villages which was filled with chinese art students (they have time on location away as part of their studies... ) painting and sketching the pituresque scenes available around every corner.
This pic is taken down one of the many alleyways... it was difficult to choose a pic to upload...as per usual... there is even a water network running through this village which is still operable today. This means that you can hear running water continuously as you walk thru the village...tis very calming... and feng shui like.
These pics are taken from some of the old village houses.... they were huge! Wooden carvings date back to both Qing and Ming dynasties and we were told that these are some of the best wooden carving to be found in the whole of china. In this pic below you can see how the wooden carvings are 3D in nature and... we were totally impressed. Amazing works of art which still survive today...
And now for the Mountain.....
there are 3 ways up the mountain...
the hard way....
the easier way.....
and then the very easy way....
The hard way is the Western Steps
The easier way is the Eastern Steps and
the very easy way is by cable car!!
We decided to take the Cable car (half way up the Eastern steps Route) and then walk the rest of the way to the top and then walk down the summit via the Western Steps route the next day.
We had pre-arranged accomodation on top of the summit for one night so that we could rise early and see the sunrise....
Here is my first shot taken above the mountain from the cable car....
And we really couldn't complain when we saw the porters carrying food and supplies up the mountain. These guys are so muscly!!! Buns of steel! And they were ascending the mountain faster than any of the tourists... quite embarrassing to admit!
Some of the gorgeous views.. Breath taking.... Here we were amongst the clouds.... not the usual pollution of China!
These shots were taken at dusk.... We were happily told by the girl at reception where to go for the best views for both the sunset and sunrise. I found it quite strange that it was located at the same point on the map.. but thankful for her 'tip' we headed off to watch the sun set.... innocently trusting her.
Upon arriving at the 'best viewing point for sunset' strangely enough there were only western tourists.. and no Chineses tourists to be found. Wierd??? I mean every other monument in China is full of Chinese tourists... tis hard to actually take a photo without them in it .....something smelled a bit fishy... didn't seem right to me. I mean there were plenty of chinese tour groups at the hotel... tour group upon tour group in fact... so where were they now?
We enjoyed the sunset... it was beautiful and well.........we didn't know any better.. but i swore to Do that the girl at hotel reception had sent the western tourists to one point and the Chinese tourists to another (better) point. Already we were being overcharged all over China and ripped off at every corner.. paying inflated entrance fees just to even see the monuments... so it made made me angry to know that she had even tried to rip us off from having the same experience.
The next morning we arose early to see our sunset.
We were down at reception at 5am (up for showers at 4.30am) and lucky for us we had ignored the suggestion from the receptionist that the sun was to rise at 6am. At 5 in the morning the hotel lobby was full of chinese tour groups heading out the door. We checked out from our room as fast as we could... and chased down the path after the tour groups.. of course walking in the opposite direction to which she had suggested to us the day before. Unbelievable!!!
So we were pretty chuffed with ourselves for not falling for the reception girl's scam and even happier when we found ourselves fitter than the chinese tour groups.. we had walked our way towards the front of the groups, in the dark mind you.
We had been walking for 40mins already..... the sun has just started to come up and we were finally approaching the viewing point... where we found all and i mean ALL!!! the chinese groups present. These groups must have been up an hour before us.... more than 1000 people were already poised for the sun to rise.
And....... there were no other western tourists in sight at all!!!!
So..... at first of course, we were pretty happy.... we hadn't been fooled twice! The only problem was though, we now had to fight amongst the masses for any viewing space at all. In the end..... we didn't even get close to actually viewing the sunrise... the crowd was more than 6 deep from the front.. everyone with camera in hand trying to get 'the shot' so.... as we'd grown used to by now on our travels... we got pushed amongst the chinese pushing each other around... (as the russian and mongolians also do to each other...) and happily made our descent down the mountain taking in the beautiful scenery on the way.....
There are many more sunrises to be seen....................... 
Some of the lush forest we walked through on our descent.. we found our own way down the mountain. :)
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