Fanjingshan - day one
Fanjingshan is a mountain in the province of Guizhou, about halfway between Guangzhou and Chengdu. It is the only home of the Guizhou Snub-nosed Monkey, which is one of the least-likely monkeys for anyone to be able see in the wild. Only part of the mountain is accessible to visitors, that access is by either a cable-car line or a single staircased trail, and there is only one troop of these monkeys in the tourist area. The chances of the monkeys being in the same place as you are pretty remote, especially when you see how rugged the surroundings are. Still, if you don't try you can't succeed! Even a small chance is better than not trying at all.
I've been to Fanjingshan twice previously. The first time was in 2013 and the second time was in January this year. On that most recent visit I didn't even get onto the mountain because it had been closed due to snow the day before I got there! You can re-read about that in this post if you like:
Chlidonias Goes To Asia, part seven: 2024-2025
Leaving Guangzhou, at the metro station by the hotel on my way to the Guangzhou South Railway Station, I had to open my pack for security to check my knife (which they sealed into a little envelope and put an "inspected" sticker on it - which didn't stop every other station's security wanting it reopened for inspection) and my deodorant (fortunately allowed, unlike previously in China when it was confiscated for being too dangerous). Then for the first time they wanted to check my contact lens solution (because it was liquid and water needs to be checked to make sure it's not ... something other than water - I'm not sure what they think it might be).
The trains show the inside and outside temperatures (inside is usually about 24 degrees Celsius). All the way between Hong Kong and Tongren (the nearest town to Fanjingshan with a station) the outside temperatures have been around 29 and 30 degrees.
I stayed overnight in Tongren at a cheap "hotel", another one of those places where it is really a grotty high-rise apartment building with some rooms turned into a "hotel". It wasn't that bad, but not the sort of place you'd be wanting to stay in for more than one night.
I went over to the bus station when I arrived to check the morning departure times for Fanjingshan but they had already closed for the night.
In the morning I looked out the window - I was on the 19th floor and the bus station was across the street - and there were some people standing around outside the station. It was 6.50am so I figured it must be opening at 7am. The last time I was here the first bus wasn't until 9.20am so I left my bags in my room because I wasn't expecting to be leaving immediately, and went over to check on times. When I got there I found several vans outside the station all going to Fanjingshan! Today was a Sunday, so maybe on the weekdays the options are fewer, or maybe it is because last time I went in winter so there were fewer passengers.
All the vans were leaving right then, and the next bus was at 8.10am so that's the one I caught. This was an actual bus too, not a van. Last time I went it had just been a car. I would be staying back at the Xui Shui Villa like I did in January. I had messaged the owner on WeChat to make sure she had a room, and at the bus station I showed the lady at the counter the hotel's business card which has the address on it to make sure the bus was going by this route (there are two entrances to Fanjingshan, and I couldn't remember which one I had to go to [it was the East Gate]). She said it did. Once inside the station I found the bus, and asked the lady collecting the tickets if the bus went past the hotel, and she said it did. When the driver arrived I checked with him, and he said it did. So I had three different people telling me this bus went past this hotel. Because I was in China I was pretty confident this meant that I was on the wrong bus but I left it to play out, and surprisingly it was the right bus and I arrived without a hitch!
As I had hoped, the temperature at Fanjingshan village was much nicer, being at a higher altitude, not hot, a bit drizzly but that was fine with me. This is still my favourite place I've stayed in China. I genuinely could just hang out here for a month. Spend some days doing nothing, some just walking along the river looking for birds, some going up the mountain. So many birds could be seen just by sitting outside the room looking at the trees on the other side of the river. There are no mosquitoes here either, which is unusual.
From the hotel I walked to the tourist centre which is 2km up the road, following the river. The river was much fuller than in winter - it was now the rainy season - and the trees were in full leaf. Although I could hear lots of birds all the leaves made it
much more difficult seeing them than in winter!
The sidewalk along the "main" road is made of tiles which were very slippery in the rain, and the same at the tourist area where much of it was tiled. I slipped multiple times while walking, luckily without actually falling over, and just on this first day (which was drizzling with intermittent downpours) I saw three other people slip on stairs, one of whom fell on his back on the edge of the mountain staircase and probably hurt himself quite badly. I could see why they would close the staircase in the winter when it would be covered in ice or snow.
In the post about my January visit I had talked about how it appeared that the whole entrance had been moved to a new location, but I was wrong. In fact they have simply built a new tourist building (where you buy the tickets) away from the entrance and put in a sort of plaza, so it all looks different. When I was there in 2013 the ticket building was right at the entrance which is why I was confused. Now, from the new ticket building you walk across to the "entrance to the scenic area" where you go through a ticket-check and then walk a short way up another road to where the vans leave from (up to the cable-car). It was at this point that I recognised the big entry gates which the vans go through, and everything became clear.
Access on the mountain is firstly on a 9.5km road taken by the park shuttles up to the lower cable-car station at 850 metres altitude, then you can choose to either walk up the staircase which is 6.5km of almost-continuous stairs or take the cable-car to the upper station at 2023 metres altitude. There are more stairs after that (8000 steps in total apparently) to the top at 2572 metres.
It was around midday when I got to the tourist centre, so I had decided to walk up the staircase but take the cable-car down. The altitude range of the snub-nosed monkeys basically lies right between the two cable-car stations, so taking the staircase seems like the "best" way of approaching things.
The lady at the ticket counter said it would be very foggy at the top and was I sure I wanted to go up. I wasn't there for the view, so I said yes.
The entry ticket is 100 Yuan, then 48 Yuan (return) for the shuttle bus to the lower cable-car station, plus 10 Yuan "insurance". The cable-car is 70 Yuan each way. Surprisingly the prices aren't much different from when I was here in 2013. Then the entrance fee was 90 Yuan and the shuttle was 20 Yuan (so 40 return), but the cable-car was actually more expensive at 90 Yuan each way.
If you need rescuing from the staircase because you aren't fit enough, it will cost you 600 Yuan.
There isn't actually much to say about my visit to the mountain today. I took about four hours walking up, but it was too foggy to see most of the birds well enough for ID. I've only got four species noted down as being seen there (out of the day's total of 17 species): Black-headed Sibia, Buffy Laughing Thrush, Yellow-browed Tit and Green-backed Tit, as well as a group of Tibetan Macaques.
The Buffy Laughing Thrushes were a lifer, and are one of the more attractive species in the group. Laughing thrushes are a varied bunch. Some are plain brown, some are intricately patterned, some are brightly-coloured. Most of them are skulkers of the undergrowth. I don't know how many there are in total, but I've seen 37 species in the wild and am always wanting to see more.
Buffy Laughing Thrush. This is a photo I took on one of the other days - because of the fog inside the forest I didn't get any bird photos today.
This one is a White-browed Laughing Thrush, a more widespread species, which I photographed along the road back to the hotel on one of the days.
In the evening I found a giant huntsman spider on the wall in my room, right by the bed. I weighed up whether I should stay or go back to New Zealand immediately. The only potential spider-containing object in the room was a small glass which likely wouldn't even be big enough to fit all the legs in but it would have to do. I had to move the bedside table slightly to get closer, and immediately the spider zipped across the wall and disappeared behind the headboard of the bed. This was much worse! I couldn't move the bed though - well I mean I
could have moved it but it was a huge bed and the spider would have definitely outsmarted me and then come looking for revenge in the night - so I just had to spend the rest of my stay knowing that my end was almost certainly nigh.
