Legend has it that Huang Di, or the Yellow Emperor, cultivated refined pearls of immortality, and learned about morality on HuangShan, which is why the mountains are named after him.
We went up to HuangShan by cable car in the morning, and climbed the last 1,000 feet to the top. It was cloudy, wet and miserable when we went up, and when I took pictures, like the one below, I was depressed. I was convinced that all I would see would be a cloudy, misty landscape, much like what we were used to in school. Nainital, my school town, is a beautiful town. Or, was until the tourists decided to mess it up. We used to live in the mists of Nainital right through the four months of the monsoon season, and it was beautiful. The fresh smell of mist, with moss and lichen growing of the walls was, to say the least, invigorating. There is magic in the mist, yet when I went up to HuangShan, the mist depressed me, because I wanted sunshine.
I was resigned to my fate, until after lunch, when one of my Chinese brethren came running into the hotel, yelling, "Lai, lai, lai. Kuai!". Seeing me, he announced, "Laoban, ni yao nide zhaoxiang ji".
I grabbed my camera, and went outside. I almost fell to my knees in pure joy when, on reaching the world outside, I beheld sunshine, and the beautiful sea of clouds.
No photograph can do justice to it. Yes, the photos do bring the beauty to life somewhat, but by no way do they do justice to the beauty of it all.
HuangDi, if he spent a significant amount of time here, would have spent a large part of that time praising the Immortal Heavens. There is something in the beauty of the mountains that simply calls out to the soul, and when you see the soft cotton candy clouds gently wafting amongst the mountains, it simply calls to your soul.
The one thing that I absolutely admire about the Chinese authorities, and I have seen this in Zhang Jia Jie and Jiu Zhai Gou and YangShuo as well, is that they have managed to preserve their scenic spots, and have managed to keep them largely free of pollution.
This is one thing that we, in India, must learn to copy, and to copy well. Economic competition is all very well, but there is no point in economic progress, if it results in the destruction of the world we live in.
HuangShan is the last time that I shot in jpg, and from there on, I switched to shooting in the RAW mode. If there is one thing I would undo, it is the fact that I shot photos in HuangShan, in jpegs.
Maybe, one day, HuangShan will welcome me back. Then, I will go back and shoot it again, in all its glory.
Stunning images.
Posted by: vidur | August 03, 2011 at 02:35 AM