last weekend, my friends and i spent saturday hiking the hui hang ancient trail – it was an old tea route between the provinces of anhui and zhejiang – about 15km in an old almost untouched valley (no cell phone reception!) in between two of the more populous provinces in china.
there’s plenty of hiking companies who will take you out there, but with a little bit of work and some chinese ability, you don’t need to spend the 100 USD that some companies are charging.
how we did it:
1. late night bus to jixi. jixi is the hometown of hu jintao – and a four hour bus ride from shanghai which costs about 120 rmb. the buses left from a private station near the zhongshan north road station on line 1.
2. across the street from the long distance bus station in jixi – there is a village level bus station – just ask around for buses vans headed towards the hui hang gu dao/ancient road. should cost around 6 rmb.
3. from there follow the handpainted signs towards the ancient road. its fairly well signposted with one turn up the valley which we almost missed and lots of food, drinks and a few guesthouses along the way. and some spectacular views – especially for being a short weekend trip from shanghai.
4. by the end of your hike you can head to some county level seats – we just booked a mini bus all the way back to hangzhou and then some of us came directly back to shanghai that night.
here’s the photos:
Hi,
Thanks for the post, very helpful! I have a question about transportation from the end of the trail back to Hangzhou. When did you book your mini-bus, where and how much did it cost?
Thanks!
Yaya
Hi Yaya -
We didn’t book ahead. When we got to the end of the trail – there were some guys who were manning the entrance/exit gate. They said they could get a mini-van (and I mean mini) from the end of the trail to Lin’An for 200 rmb. So once we got in, the driver said “Well, I could take you to Lin’An, but there’s no buses to Hangzhou – I could take you to Zhongtai for 300rmb” – so we agreed .. . and then we were about 50km from Hangzhou when we agreed to go all the way there for 450rmb. From reading the Chinese websites they say there’s quite a lot of these mini-vans around from the end of the trail. Just make sure you don’t end up at the trail-end too late.
Great. Thanks!
Anyone else interested in this hike, and able to read Chinese, might find this link helpful:
http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/92807859.html