When we went to Tianmenshan mountain in 2012, everything was easy and greatly enjoyable. We went to the terminus of the world’s longest cable car, bought tickets, took the 35-minute ride up the mountain, got out at the top and took the path to the 999 steps leading up to the huge hole in the mountain, or went the other way and walked the 3 kms on the Guigu plank path to the Buddhist temple. The path is fixed along the side of a cliff with drops of 1,000 feet over the edge and stunning views.
Now, due to a 100-fold increase in the number of Chinese tourists, we have to book well in advance for the cable car, and now have to join an enormous queue for a bus to take us to a location at the side of the mountain where we take a much smaller cable car for a 5-minute ride straight up the mountain. There is a 500-metre walk at the top which takes us to the foot of the 999 steps. I climbed them which was possibly the most exhausting thing I have ever done. I practically collapsed at the top and envied the little kids who had made it to the top with no apparent ill-effects. I then went down and met a charming young girl who asked how old I was. I told her and she told an admiring crowd that I was 77 and they all said how tough and brave I was. I felt better then.
At the bottom, after getting a bollocking from Jennifer for not telling her where I was going, I went to tourist information, and was told that the path to the temple now started from the top of the 999 steps. I recovered consciousness to be told that there was an escalator to the beginning of the path to the temple. So we paid £3 and went up not one but 13 escalators to the very top of the mountain. They lead us to the beginning of the path, but it was a stone path round the Eastern Route on the mountain, nothing like as dramatic as the Western Route plank path. Some nice views at first, and a glass path for a short distance for which we had to put on furry coverings over our shoes so as not to scratch the glass. Most of the path was through a dense forest which was charming enough, but not as dramatic as the Western Route. There was an ear-splitting sound of a wide variety of whistles and screeches in the forest which we assumed must be parrots, monkeys or other large critters until some bloke climbed up a tree and caught a grasshopper. We could have come back on the Western Route, but there was a notice at the temple warning of holes in the plank path and no-one else seemed to be doing it. So we went home on the Eastern path, glad we went in 2012 but rueing the huge expansion of Chinese domestic tourism which has changed things for the worse in many ways.
