10th April – Wudangshan

So another sleep in and now the toilet smells like festering pee which is weird cos i haven;t gone that much and i have good aim now. glad i showered last night but den gets a touch of warm water so not sure who is better off.
I copy some chinese characters cos we need to book our sleeper train to Chengdu and since this place is so small i wonder at how much english...there is no english anywhere else! But she had good english and luckily got us sleeping tickets, and now we now know the symbols for top, middle and bottom bunks and find ourselves in different cabins but same section so not a bad effort. The weather is looking decidely shite so we (much to my relief) decide to forgo the trek to the top and make like a rich chinese and take the tourist bus and cable car. Turns out to be a freaking HUGE way (and fair amount of money too!) but even on the bus there are great views and we really do steadily climb into the clouds. WE then take the cable car up which is really rthe steepest form of transpot i have EVER seen and that realllllly takes us into and then above the next layer of clouds. At one point it gets hard to see the car infront. Its up super high and the chinese bush is really beautiful, their trees are so different, often bent and twisted in funny shapes and sometimes the leaves are so fine, and then there are quite a lot of blossom trees too so you get this plot of pink amongst the green. At the top is this ancient monastry, its about 500 years old. its FREEZING here and were are right in the thick of clouds but you can see parts of the mountian and the lowr clouds in the gaps and its so beautiful. We pay (even more, SIGH) to get to the actual summit but its worth it as we're about the NEXT layer of clouds and can see the mist/clouds RUNNING over the ancient chinese buildings below. Smehow its how i imagine china to be so depsite the fact i'm compltely out of breath and it only 6 degrees its really amazing and almost satisfying to know you have found something out of a photo.
Have a strange dinner ...the tofu tastes like soap, but i brought some flat bread off the street and its hot and beautiful for dipping (in the other dish...not the soapy one!)