The hotel is a mix between good and bad. The room is as described although the facilities advertised are not all in place. As it happens they don’t have a restaurant and if your deal includes breakfast they go and buy it from outside restaurants and deliver it to your room. That’s fine but not when you asked for baozi, the baozi shop doesn’t open that early and they bring you a huge bowl of noodles and a spicy egg instead. Needless to say it went untouched and I did have what I wanted when we got to the bus station and found we had 40 minutes to kill. I couldn’t just buy two, they only sold them in sixes so Alice had two and we took two away in a bag.
The rickety old bus took an hour to get to Danxia Geoform Park and with it being wintry (well below zero today) and no crops in the fields, the scenery en route was decidedly grim.
As we approached the park however, it became apparent that we were nearing a true marvel of Mother Nature. Firstly I spotted a mountain range that was so black they looked as if someone had painted them. Sadly a picture taken on the move through a grimy bus window does nothing to show how magnificent they were and the remarkable clarity of colour. Despite the morning having started overcast, we were by now blessed with sunshine. I did remark to Alice that I was so glad I never acceded to her suggestion that we went to the park at dawn, as advised on various online sites..
And then we were dumped on a road. The entrance to the park must have been about three quarters of a mile up another road and once we arrived yes, it looked ok but nothing really special. 150y for the pair of us for entry and tour bus and we were on our way.
My God. It’s hard to imagine that mountains can have strata of blue, green, gold, yellow, browns of all descriptions and silvery greys all nestling up to each other. Yet that’s exactly what it was.
There were four stops for everyone to take advantage of the steps to gain the best vantage points for photos. Everyone except me of course. This tour is really only fully experienced by the strong of leg! I would have needed paramedics equipped with oxygen before I attained the halfway mark at the first stop and I knew it. Cue handing my phone to Alice to take photos for me from the top! I could have lied and said I did the full circuit but if that were the case I would be in a mortuary now and you would never be reading this.
At the second stop the fact I am observant came in jolly handy. The buses drop you off and then when more visitors come down from the mountains they drive off with them - disconcerting the first time until another bus arrives and does the same, so you realise all you do is get whichever one is there at the time. The second stop was different. I packed Alice off with my camera (I did take many of the shots though!) and duly waited for the group’s return.
Luckily I did a spot of wandering around at the bottom and noticed the walkway seemed to be leading the walkers (who I could not see, they were behind the hills) away to another place. I started walking and sure enough I saw Alice eventually emerge coming down in the distance! It would have been nice to have been told because I would have stayed on the bus to the pick-up point! No harm done and it was only at that one stop.
At the final stop of four, the one where in the summer you can take helicopter trips (which must be out of this world) and from a sign in Chinese I guessed you can also hire camels to ride, a little feral dog came to greet the tourists every time a minibus arrived. Being Chinese most of them were terrified of her but of course I just had to play. Her face was as ugly as sin but she had a lovely nature and had never looked in a mirror. The two baozi in a bag we had brought? No prizes for guessing where they went…………
The photos I am attaching in no way capture the full splendour of this deservedly UNESCO world heritage site but I hope you get some idea of how magnificent a wonder it is.
When it was over (about two hours in total although probably longer in summer because all the drinks and food kiosks would be open) we hiked back to await the next bus back to Zhangye. Standing there slowly turning into icicles, something wonderful happened. A young couple in a car who had been on one of the buses in the park with us, stopped and told Alice to get in, they would take us to Zhangye! They are from Xi’an in Shaanxi province and are on holiday so they dumped us outside their hotel, which is a spit from the temple Alice wants to visit tomorrow and also a pagoda I had mentioned. ‘Andy ‘arry - less than 10y in a taxi from our hotel.
Hotpot dinner and a beer (she got away lightly for 22y) and back to the hotel where I complained last night about the room being too warm. Were we glad to get back this evening!!
Once I post this entry she wants to watch the new, ninety minute Sherlock episode on my computer because the Chinese haven’t got it yet. I suppose it can’t all be roses…………
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