Changing parent directory (../) with symlinks

Bash (as well as ksh, zsh, and even ash) track directory changes so that cd /foo/bar && cd .. always takes you to /foo even if bar is a symlink. Pass the -P option to cd to ignore the tracked change and follow the “physical” directory structure:

cd -P ..

See help cd or man builtins for documentation about the bash builtin cd. If you really dislike the directory tracking feature, you can turn it off with set -P in bash (set -o no_chase_link in zsh).

You can also use readlink to find the physical path to this directory, then go one directory higher:

cd $(readlink -f .)/..

One method you could use is to use an alias instead of a symlink to take you to ~/a/really/long/path. That's the method I use, since then I can just type a simple 1/2/et cetera letter command instead of cd symlink