By the Oct Moon festival we had been in Shanghai almost 3 months… the initial heat and humidity was starting to wane but I was still craving fresh air and green. We had been warned by many people “Don’t travel within china in the Chinese holidays”. This warning seemed well founded as the entire country would have the same days off work, the same days to visit the countries attractions, the same days using the public transport network. That is potentially 1.4 billion people on the move.

Despite the warnings the pull to travel was too strong… we carefully picked the days to travel and booked train tickets to Mògànshān. My trusty lonely planet with claims of bamboo forests, streams, kilometers of hiking trails and fresh air had inspired the choice.

Transitioning from the outdoor, tough and free life style in Zambia to the apartment living, sanitized and more controlled lifestyle in shanghai had been a test for us all. Don’t get me wrong Shanghai has bought us some amazing experience and opportunities but the difference is extreme.

The boys had gone from being barefoot, most of their play being outdoors and with minimal supervision, to more rules, most play in door and always being supervised. They had adjusted surprisingly well, they still played, they still laughed and we still encourage them to be independent and free spirits.But now it was time for outdoor time!

We booked on an early train for the second holiday day, our thinking that most people who were going to travel would have already done so. We had been told to get there early and expect chaos, and yes it was busy but not chaos… deciphering the signs took a bit of time but we found the gate (yes like an airport 🙂 ) in plenty of time. As we waited we saw families with small children queuing up at the side of the gate… so decided to join them. Two minutes before the train was due to arrive there was an announcement and a sudden charge for the gate barriers. Although we could not understand the announcement by the sudden activity (and yes slight chaos) it was evident it was time to go to the train platform. Luckily the family queue we had found our self in was much calmer than the masses going through the main gate.

At the gate a guard checked our tickets and passports then let us through to the platform. The platform had markings on the floor, behind which some queues of people had formed. The markings appeared to be carriage numbers so we found ones which matched our tickets and joined what we hoped was the right queue. Within seconds of us joining the queue the high-speed train arrived, it looked quite futuristic with its shaped front and wide body. Once the train arrived the doors on the other side opened to let people off and then moments later shut and ours opened. Before we had found our seats the train was off again. Super efficient, the train could not have stopped for more than 3 mins! We would need to be ready to disembark sharpish at our stop.

I would totally recommend travel with kids on china’s (high speed) trains! They run on time, they are clean, there is space to move around and they are far more economical. We wouldn’t have to buy any of our kids tickets if we didn’t want to… children under a certain height can travel for free but they don’t get a seat. We choose to buy the eldest two tickets but have baby blue on our lap. It worked perfectly while we were in second class as the arm rest raised. 2 seats are plenty big enough for 3 small bums! But in first class the arms don’t move, so for us 2nd class is better even though the seats are slightly smaller. This trip was only short but I have heard that for long journeys it is totally worth getting a sleeper carriage.

Half way to  our destination the train pulled in at a station, guests were let off but before anyone got on a hostess came along the carriage and turned every seat around!!! It was bizarre but it meant when we did depart that all seats were facing the direction we were travelling. Quite clever I guess… Lego boy realized the toys he had put in the seat pocket in front were now actually 4 rows behind him! All items were retrieved safely …. and we were not the only bemused travelers trying to retrieve items 🙂

Luckily as we drew nearer to our destination there was an announcement and I recognized the name of our station and the number 5 … assuming it meant we would be arriving at our station in 5 mins we assembled ourselves at the door. We were travelling light… one big bag (on Husbands back), baby blue on my back and the boys had a smallish bag each. That was it and the main bulk of it was nappies! Maybe time to start potty training.

A one and a half hour taxi ride up the mountain to our accommodation gave us fantastic views over the forests and mountains of the region. My heart grew lighter, the air became fresher (and colder) as we winded higher and higher up the mountains into the forest. We drove around the same village a couple of times, until the taxi driver turned to us and started talking Chinese… I guessed he couldn’t find the accommodation. I quickly phoned the accommodation and passed my phone to the taxi driver. This was a trick I had seen a couple of friends use in Shanghai. Phone the destination and pass phone to the taxi driver… it seems to work. I kinda wish I could understand the conversation … I imagine it goes a bit like…

Destination: “Hello, Mògànshān BnB how can i help”
Taxi Driver: “Hello, I have foreigners in my taxi that don’t understand me and they just gave me the phone”
Destination: “Ok?”
Taxi Driver: “the address they gave me is ……blah blah”
Destination: “Oh yes that is us”
Taxi Driver: “Great, can you give me directions”

… but i also imagine it is not quite so polite 🙂

Not long after the phone call the taxi driver pulled in to the village square and started getting the bags out the boot. We paid our fair and he pointed up the hill. I looked blankly back at him…. he muttered something in Chinese and walked off up the hill… less than 3 mins later he came back with a very jovial looking man who was waving at us excitedly.

We thanked the taxi driver in our broken Chinese, he bowed and returned to his taxi. The man who we now were following up the hill welcomed us in broken English (but much better than our Chinese!) and indicated he wanted to add me on WeChat. (WeChat is a social media application used here in china, kind of a merge of Facebook and WhatsApp, which are banned here). Using WeChat is another way to overcome the language barrier, it has an inbuilt translation option that although not perfect is a life saver on many occasions. Via WeChat I established he was the owner of our accommodation and we were very welcome. It was a short (but steep) walk up to the BnB but we were rewarded with tea that the owners wife had made.

The village was rough and ready, I was kinda expecting it to be more built up because its a tourist spot but was relieved it was not. We passed locals selling fruit and nuts from bike drawn carts, ducks wandering along the lane and a lot of dogs. A stream ran along side the lane, and on the other side was bamboo, bamboo forest as far as the eye could see. It was slightly raining by the time we reached the accommodation and for the first time since arriving in China I felt cold.

The accommodation was a small BnB made out of concrete, wrapped around by bamboo decking, steep wooden staircase and intriguing objects. It was quirky, I instantly liked it.

The drizzle which had started as we walked up the hill had now turned into a full blown down pour and the chill in the air became more apparent. We had brought some waterproofs and warmer clothes but having lived in the African sun for the past two years we found our “warmer” clothes were ill-suited to the coming Chinese winter. We decided to wait out the rain and had a lovely simple home cooked lunch in the accommodation.  Simple Chinese food at its best (i.e without all the bones!), egg and tomatoes, a green bean dish, noodles and white rice. The owners did try to convince us to have some snails which i’m ashamed to say I couldn’t accept but the boys enjoyed cleaning them with the owners out in the small courtyard.

We enjoyed a peaceful afternoon in and around the accommodation, exploring the stream (getting our limited supply of clothes wet), feeding the ducks, and taking in the slower pace of life. The boys helped de-shell nuts for what turned out to be our evening meal. Honestly I’m surprised there were any left as the kids seem to have “a one for me, one for the tub” policy. The fresh air worked a charm on the boys and they were all safely asleep in there loft bed nice and early. Husband and I enjoyed a quite beer on the veranda taking in the silence and peace.

The next day the weather lifted and we decided to head out for a hike, the forests were calling. A quick WeChat conversation later and I gathered there were marked routes around the area, there was a map in the center of the village showing them. So we walked into the town, stocked up on nuts and water, and to find the map.

The village center was no more picturesque than around our accommodation but it did have a certain charm. A lot of higgledy piggledy concrete buildings clinging to the steep slopes, it certainly didn’t feel that touristy but I expect in summer it does get quite busy. The whole place seemed more practical, without a care for aesthetics or finishing touches. A contrast to the UK and places I have traveled in Europe where every building would have been designed to make the most of the stunning views. But not here, in fact most of the views from the village itself were obscured by the miles and miles of electric cabling hung all over the place.

We found the map well weathered but just about readable. It appeared there were various routes indicated by posts with colored arrows on them. We decided to start on the shortest route which looked like it would take us back up the valley past the accommodation, up the mountain side and back round to the village center again… our theory was start with the up hill and end with down. I took a photo of the worn map and hoped it would be enough if we got hopelessly lost.

It turns out we did get hopelessly lost. I blame husband on his “short cut” but to be fair the map and the route were pretty hard to follow. The map definitely was not to scale and the posts were largely hidden by growing plants. But what a place to get lost! The bamboo forests although incredibly disorientating where spectacular! 1 I didn’t know bamboo could get so tall, 2 I didn’t know it was so green! That may sound like a really stupid thing to say but as the sun comes through the tall bamboo it kind of made the light itself look green. Gosh I wish I had better words to describe it!

The boys loved the freedom, running ahead, climbing, hiding and laughing. After a couple of hours of finding and losing and losing and finding the track again we came out into another valley. To our right was a village and our left the track back to the accommodation. The boys would soon be getting hungry and the laughter was likely to turn into whines. We decided to head into the village to find lunch.

This village was just as functional as the one we were staying in. With no sign of food I decided to ask a local man on a bike. I say ask… really it involved a bit a miming and use of google translate. He was evidently enjoying this exchange with crazy Chinese-less foreigners, his smile exaggerating the many wrinkles of life on his face. Eventually he leads us up an concrete alleyway (picking up a couple of his friends on the way) to another road and points towards what looks like a bus stop. The now 4 strong group of elderly men wave us happily off after one last stroke of the boys blond hair.

Not really sure what we were going to find we wandered up to the bus stop. Outside what appeared to be a shop was a big and rather loud gathering of villagers playing cards. The boys were just as fascinated in this display as many of the villagers were in the boys. I went into the shop, Husband hung around outside watching the boys, watching the game, whose participants where also watching the boys.

The shop was nothing more than a few piles of supplies with ladies laughing and drinking tea. I managed to buy, water, popcorn, Oreos, funny looking bread, fruit and some Pringles. As we left we heard the laughter from the ladies drinking tea and the heated debates of the card game return.

Not far out of the village we found a spot to eat the supplies I purchased, which as it turned out wasn’t a bad picnic. The boys bellies full we decided to take the long track home, the path should have taken us up the mountain side and along the ridge before following a stream back down into the village. We found the path up the mountain side easy enough and started to ascend. We followed the track as it winded to and fro, every now and again a path with steep steps forked off straight up, it appeared these were short cuts, removing the winding to and fro instead steeply going up. Husband decided we should try it.

So off we went up the steep path, some of the steps were over half the height of Middle Man, hard enough for me to get up, never mind Middle Man and Baby Blue. Baby Blue was starting to get tired so into the trusty Manduca he went. I don’t know how much longer I will be able to carry him (all 18lbs of him), but I will continue until I can no longer. I will miss it terribly, baby wearing, slings, and carriers have enabled us to travel places I never thought possible with young children.

Anyway I digress… the path straight up turned out not to go straight up, instead steadily beared right, away from our intended route. After maybe 30 mins it was clear we were lost, more lost than before, and the path stopped. Yep just ended in the middle of a forest.

Now the sensible thing would have been to turn back… but that meant going back down till we hit the original path again and then climbing back up the mountain on the right path. Not something any of us where keen to do. Especially me who was now carrying the sleeping weight of Baby Blue. Lego boy (my worrier of the 3) starts to panic… mummy what if we cant find the path…. mummy where will we get food… mummy when will it be dark… mummy what if we run into a panda.

Now I don’t claim to have many skills but problem solving is one thing I think I’m pretty good at. I used the GPS on my phone which gave us a rough position… I say rough because the only map App I have is Google which is also band in china. So although i’m sure the GPS was 100% accurate, the position google thought that was on its map was not. As proven by the fact the map thought I was currently stood in the middle of a stream. I guessed that meant a stream would be near by, that might give us a break in the bamboo so we could actually see the lay of the land.

We carried on through the bamboo and luckily we found the stream… but it did not allow us to see the view.  😦

Assuming the stream was the one marked on the map and considering the movement we had made on the GPS i worked out which direction we had to keep heading. After about another 15 mins of walking through the forest we found a building (well part of one) and a track…. not the track we were aiming at but a track regardless. We also got a break in the forest and could see the valley. Our village was indeed in the direction we were heading. If my calculations were right this track should lead us to a road which our intended path should cross.

Just as we were about to set off another family stumbled out of the forest in front of us. Obviously more victims of the misleading “short cuts”. Via phones we manage to work out they are trying to get to the village we bought lunch. I told them where we had come from and that we were also lost. They decided to continue on and plunged back into the forest.

The afternoon was now drawing on and although we were now on a clearly used track I still didn’t want to get caught out here in the dark. I gave myself another 15 mins to be sure I knew where we were, after that turning back might have been our only option.

Thankfully  5 mins later the track did hit the road which did meet with our intended path. I was glad we did find the path as it followed a stream all the way back down the mountain side, every few meters we came across small pools or waterfalls which the boys played in. All in all the walk was a great adventure even though we didn’t meet a panda!

The following days were spent in similar fashion, husbands watch tracking over 28000 steps a day! We got better at finding the posts and better at not getting lost, the weather also got better giving us fantastic views across the mountains.

One day we decided to visit the top of Mount Morgan, given the amount of walking the boys had already done we thought we would get a lift up and our host was more than happy to. About 3k from the top we hit traffic… very strange but I guess with only one road in and out it is inevitable. Much to the shock of our host we bailed out the car and walked the rest of the way. I didn’t leave the city to sit in a traffic jam.

It was quite a steep walk to the top and the further we went the thicker the cloud. At the top we could see nothing! And it was packed! On the trail we had seen a few people but nothing like the masses of people stood in the car park at the top. It seemed a lot of people had come to see a car park and cloud. We bought snacks including some amazing raisins from vendors in the car park then headed off to the view point. Again it was busy and without much of a view our boys soon became the star attraction.

Escaping the crowds we decided to wander the paths and gardens on the mountain top, as soon as we left the view point and the car-park area the crowds thinned dramatically.  As we found another look out the cloud parted and we saw sections of the view, over the next half an our the cloud thinned and indeed the view was impressive.

On a walk we had passed a high rope course and Middle man was super keen to have a go. He wasn’t tall enough to do the “blue” route but there was a “green” route he was allowed to do. A very nervous Lego Boy was signed up to do the blue route by the husband (who was also very excited). I was just about to pay when the lady behind the counter asked about Baby Blue…. What? My baby? No he is not big enough for high ropes! Is he? Apparently he is! He could do the green route with Middle Man.

So Lego Boy and Husband set off to the blue route which was a lot higher than I thought it would be! I felt nervous for my first born but I knew his daddy would support/tease him around.

I set off with the other two to the green route, thankfully only a meter of so off the ground. My feet didn’t even need to leave the floor, phew!

Middle man was in his element, my fearless impulsive little man started trying to climb the course before he had even got his safely gear on. The assistant called him back, somehow the poor chap managed to get a harness, rope and gloves onto a bouncing Middle Man. Mean while I was trying to convince Baby Blue into any of the gear, he wanted to do the climb but not wear this strange gear.

As soon as Middle man was safely clipped into the course he was off! The assistant showing him how to move from one obstical to another. I wanted to get photos but I was still fighting with Baby Blue, the harness was finally on but the gloves were causing a massive melt down… he now just wanted to go follow middle man!

I negotiated with an assistant and finally they agreed he didn’t need the gloves. Just as I clipped Baby Blue on Middle Man appeared. “Mummy, mummy, can I do it again? Can I? Can I?”… So I got my photos as both boys made there way around the course. I was super impressed and a little sad at what my baby was doing. How had he got so big? So grown up? I was also super impressed with Middle Man helping and encouraging his little brother around. It was super cute and for me a highlight of the trip.