Holiday on a Mountain Top with .01% of China.

That makes 150,000 folks!

 

So I thought I’d quickly pen one on the great Changbaishan, since I’ve raved about it for years.

Let’s just say, it wasn’t lonely at the top. But it was truly truly magnificent.

In fact, Jilin is such a beautiful place that I feel rather reluctant spreading word about it.

But to be fair, I’m already late in terms of discovering such a gorgeous nature reserve (in fact, the largest in China. Betcha didnt know that…)

Changbaishan is already very touristed, and the cement trucks that rode through the gates during our visit was a rather sad reminder that the magical places in China are starting to dwindle rapidly.

But one pretty good reason why Changbaishan will remain a couple of laps behind the China hotspots (jiuzhaigou in Sichuan, lijiang in Yunnan) is this – it borders North Korea. In fact, you can even see the border gates that stand tall from the summit. You can be sure it won’t warrant too much publicity on tourist brochures…

Changbaishan is only really open to tourists from june – early september, so by the time we made it to up the summit, we were freezing our ears and noses off. Worse, we stayed in a pretty cool hostel that of course have no heating yet (China usually regulates heating across the country. Heaters can’t come on till around Oct – Nov. Basically just before your fingers drop off.)

Vincent and I had one lovely saviour – a humble electric blanket. Still, we had to shower before I allowed us to hop into bed (read: rockboard). There lay another problem: hot water in trickles!

You should’ve heard us yelping as we struggled to get ourselves cleaned with one palm of hot water at a time. It was more exciting in the shower than seeing Changbaishan itself.

October 1 holidays also mean you queue like idiots everywhere. This is the scene at 2,690m…

You queue for group tickets for your tour leader (who’s busy running around seeing who’s closest to the counter. Like betting on horses.)

You queue for toilets, so much so that you feel so bad hogging a cubicle when you’re done that you wear your pants OUTSIDE the cubicle.

You queue to see a mountain. And you queue to get down a mountain.

China is just insane over the national holidays, but as one Chinese Jiliner put it, 多人才有人气嘛！(more people, more people atmosphere…). Yup, we’re all from a different planet guys.

Anyway, just thought I’d proudly share that the most perfect autumn i had ever experienced is certainly in this region.

Will try to share more of these on facebook, since uploading photos are such a pain these days.

So leaving you guys with just one: