So, somebody in our little tour group (of two) had decided that he wanted to go 'off the beaten track'. We picked a spot - Wulingyuan scenic area - that had been recommended by the guys that Richard met on his trip to the mountain near Xi'an. It only had a brief couple of columns about it in the Lonely Planet and ominously they started with the words 'ventures westwards have always been rewarding, if a little off the path of less resistance'.

We left Shanghai about midday on the Monday on our hard sleeper to Changsha. Once at Changsha we would have to catch another train to Zhangjiajie city, followed by a bus to Zhangjiajie village one of the entry spots to the scenic area. The hard sleeper to Changsha was a fairly uneventful 20 hour train trip. For those that don't know there are several classes on Chinese trains - soft sleeper (four berths in a closed compartment), hard sleeper (six berths per compartment open onto the corridor, 66 beds per carriage), soft seat and hard seat (rammed to the rafters, smoky, noisy etc). So hard sleeper it was. To be honest, it's really not too bad at night as you just get on and get into your bunk to sleep (earplugs and eyemask are useful things to take!). In the morning you are awoken by sunlight filtering gently through the curtains and you awake refreshed and ready to face the world.

Actually, perhaps not....you are in fact awoken by the lights coming on, music blaring out of the speakers, cigarette smoke wafting down the carriage and the smell and sound of phlegm and various other bodily fluids being ejected at high velocity at each end of the compartment. It's not always the nicest way to wake up, but it's a very cheap way to travel long distances. So we arrived in Changsha following 20 hours in one of these trains....neither of us feeling particularly well rested.

We then had to brave the huge queues in the station to buy our onward tickets to Zhangjiajie city - which the LP helpfully informed us was a 5 hour train journey but longer on the coach. Reaching the front of the queue we were told there we no more seats on the train but we could buy standing tickets and upgrade on the train. Since we had no real desire to stay in Changsha we decided to do that and booked onto the 2.30pm departure, which meant we had about five hours to waste in Changsha. We decided to spend the time checking our emails and perhaps getting a bite to eat. The bite to eat was not too difficult to find but internet proved a different matter.

We walked for approx two hours in fairly humid heat and finally found what could only be described as the worlds first internet dive bar. The man sat at the terminal next to us was checking out some interesting shots of faceless women and the whole place was humid and dank in the extreme. We checked our emails and also checked what time the train would arrive in Zhangjiajie - it turned out that the LP was (surprisingly) wrong and in fact the train would take seven hours. So we would be turning up in the middle of nowhere after seven hours standing on a train (after a 20 hour sleeper train) with no accommodation booked (we tried to call some places but all the numbers were wrong) Still, how (much further) wrong could things go....?

We boarded our train that afternoon. All the hard seat carriages - where we were allowed to stand - were smoky, boiling hot and humid and absolutely packed. Needless to say, we were the only westerners on the train so caused total bemusement wherever we went. We were standing in carriage 15 and I cannot describe how filthy and tired we were by this point, sandwiched between the toilets and the bins with the entire carriage staring at us open mouthed in amazement. Of course the upgrade person was located in carriage 11 so we then had to traipse down four rammed train carriages with our rucksacks on our backs. I'll cut a (very) long story a little shorter here and just say that we eventually managed to communicate that we wanted to upgrade. There were some empty hard sleeper berths so we ended up in one of those and managed to get a bit of kip. This was fortunate considering what was yet to come......

Arriving in Zhangjiajie city around 10pm we thought rather than trying to find the local bus onwards to the village, we'd stay in the city that night and go on the next morning. So now we just needed to find a hotel. We managed to negotiate with a rip off taxi driver to get us into the centre of town (still paid over the odds but we were so tired by this point we didn't care and it was all of 1.80gbp anyway) and to the hotel listed in the LP. I went in to ask about rooms, no-one spoke any English so by the time all the communication was over with and I had realised that they had no rooms and rushed back out to Richard the taxi had driven off. Trudging back out to the street we were pretty much at the end of our tether. Another taxi driver stopped and in we got, he decided that he knew a hotel we could stay at so drove us off to some grotty little backstreet - where there was indeed what could be described as a 'hotel'. Richard negotiated on the room price and went to check out what it looked like. Came back down saying it was ok so we decided to stay - not that we had much other option anyway.

Our fitful sleep was interrupted around 2am by the sound of voices and doors banging. Five minutes later a weird wimpering noise starts up from the room next door......

Me: What's that noise?

Richard: What noise?

Me: That weird wimpering noise?....

Then I notice the sound of bed springs squeaking....

Richard: Perhaps he has a dog in there with him.

Yes Richard, what on earth would one bring to a grotty hotel at 2am other than your pet dog. Ten minutes later the man and Lassie decide to take a shower. It was that kind of place - hot water all the way through the night but strangely none in the morning when we got up. Richard decided not to mention the cockroach crawling over the toilet until after we'd left.

Just to make everything that bit better the following morning it was tipping down with rain. With rucksacks on our backs we made our way to the bus station to catch the bus to the village. This was made slightly more difficult by the fact that the phrasebook does not include the phrase "where is the bus station" but instead dives straight in with "is this the bus to Harbin?" I guess this is a useful phrase but probably one better uttered whilst actually standing in a bus station rather than on a street corner in the pouring rain. Anyway, first we had to find an ATM to get some cash. Around about the third ATM we tried we both almost decided to give in a book a plane ticket anywhere just to get out of there....I think it was the fourth or fifth ATM that finally decided to accept the fact that pin numbers don't have to be six digits long and we got some money. Then the last thing to do was a quick detour via the local food market on an empty stomach. It was as if someone had gone into a flock of geese and ducks with a blowtorch - and then strung them up on hooks around the market, they all had a slightly startled look about them, although perhaps not as startled as I looked.

Catching the right bus is quite funny - people really do try to be helpful but obviously since we can't actually speak their language nor they ours it can be quite chaotic. By majority vote we boarded a bus which we hoped would take us to the right place - you get on and repeat where you are going about six times over with varying pronunciation whilst everyone stares at you open mouthed. Turns out it actually was going where we wanted it to go. And it was only an hour on mountain roads at 90kph to get there.

Richard is going to write about the village itself - it really was a stunning place. The only thing I'll mention is the various amphibians, reptiles and other animals in buckets or cages outside each of the restaurants - from the mundane chickens to the more bizarre toads, terrapins and snakes. There was also one solitary rabbit - he had to be stressed, if you look around and you're the only rabbit left in town that's got to be a worry!

We are now in Hong Kong. It's a relief to find we both can still actually speak English as for a week we only had each other to talk to and I feared we were starting to communicate in our own little language of tics, whirrs and grunts. More about HK later. Bye, B x

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Posted by Becky Hoare on 31 October 2006 17:00:00 HKT #