Hefei and Huangshan, Here I Come

I get several days off class the weekend of October 1, which is China’s National Day. Naturally, my friends and I wanted to spend our break traveling. After poring over various guidebooks, we decided that Anhui Province was the best place for us to visit. A group of us purchased train tickets from Beijing to Hefei, and that was that.

Except not. We wanted to go to Huangshan, but that’s not near Hefei and the trains from Beijing to Hefei take almost 24 hours. Not to mention the fact that we had already purchased our ticket to Hefei anyway, and none of us were willing to reroute our trip or spend 24 hours in a hard seat on a slow train. Things were a little dire at this point: change our plans and skip out on Huangshan? Go to Huangshan anyway and skip out on Hefei? Somehow knock out both during break, or just scrap the trip totally? After much calling, updating each other of various developments as we individually did our own research, and scouring the Internet for transportation possibilities, we finally figured out the best way to get to Huangshan. In total, the whole trip involves trains, buses, and for some, flights (because the train tickets to Hefei, and basically every other major city in this country, sold out at lightning speed).

I’m relieved that everything seems to have worked out as of now and I’m also very excited that we have plans to camp out on top of Huangshan overnight. Not looking forward to the long train ride to Hefei in a hard seat but hey, you take what you can get when it comes to traveling on China’s National Day!

All this talk about travel reminds me that I am long overdue to post photos from my time in China so far. A photo dump/picspam will come soon, I promise!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.