Wuzhishan/Nanling National Park
Trains are easy to catch. You go to the counter, buy a ticket, go to the gate, show your ticket, and board. Buses however do follow a multitude of routes, written in a foreign script.
In the transit stop of Shaoguan I ended up getting a taxi to the other bus station, where thankfully there was a ticket counter. Some hours later I arrived at Wuzhishan.
The hotel (Orange House) was quite nice, but a little basic. I stayed in the ranger's housing out the back, with a triple all to myself. I spent a day and a half walking around the trails up the mountains. Very pretty, but there was construction workers everywhere! They were upgrading the trails I was walking on, and the sounds of masonry saws was a little off-putting.
Definitely pretty, but skippable.
Mount DanXia
Looking for stuff to do around Shaoguan on the internet, I found Mount Danxia was highly recommended by fellow travellers, and a shortish bus ride from Shaoguan. Bus back to Shaoguan, worked out how to catch buses (write down Chinese characters for where you want to go and just show that to people), then on to Mount Danxia.
A tout grabbed me and took me to his hotel. I was walking off and he dropped the price to 70 yuan (from 100). I thought it was still overpriced, but check out was 4.30 pm the next day so not too bad after all.
Into the park, it very striking, but a fair bit of fog. And oh my shit, the heights! Scrambling up narrow and impossibly steep trails is one thing, getting back down is an entirely different proposition. I did overcome my fear, one step at a time, but it took a lot of effort. I also noticed that I was completely living in the moment, nothing like the fear of imminent death to focus the mind.
At one point a family of yokels all were taken with me, insisting on photo after photo in my presence. That got a tad annoying so I sat by an idyllic lake and let them go on ahead. This was only the start of people wanting to have photos taken with me, in every place I have been since. I pose, and the universe delivers others unto me at later times, eager to help me figure out where the fuck I am. It's not all bad.
HengShan
It was not to be. After saying 'Hengshan', the kid behind the counter at the rail station looked quizzical (an aside, he had very long and manicured fingernails, which matched a description in Anna Karenina I had read the previous night). I pointed to the Chinese characters of Hengshan and he exclaimed 'ahh, Shenghan!' exactly the same way I had just said it! Ticket in hand I boarded the train. About 15 minutes later I noticed that the ticket said Hengyuan. Fucker!
A nice lady, who had a toddler that was enamoured with my beard, helped me out told me that there were no buses from Hengyuan to Hengshan at that time of night. She organised a taxi, but that was going to be 170 yuan, I balked. Up to the train station, and after a while of wandering around a young lady came up and helped me find the ticket station. Train to Hengshan left at 3am. 'Fuck!' I muttered, to the amusement of a couple of bystanders. I then decided to try Jishou, on my way to Zhangjiajie. I forgot to check what time it was getting in, and boarded a 21 carriage train to find my crowded hard sleeper.
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