Zhangjiajie National Park (張家界) 1

Last week HK had a four day weekend for Easter,  so I took the opportunity to take a trip I have wanted to do for several years -  a trip to Zhangjiajie National Forest Park ( 湖南张家界国家森林公园) in Hunan. Aka the landscape that was at least a partial inspiration for the geography on the planet Pandora in 'Avatar'.

When I first started going to China over 10 years ago,  I spent a lot of time visiting the natural wonders of the country (Guilin, Three Gorges, etc).  Nowadays because I'm mostly going for work, I don't get as much time to go off the beaten path, I'm usually in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, etc.    But this time I decided to break out and finally see Zhangjiajie, a place I heard about maybe 6 or 7 years ago.

Since there's no direct flights between HK and Zhangjiajie city,  we had to take the train up to Guangzhou and then fly from there.   Its a small city by Chinese standards (1.47 million people), but by US standards that would be the #6 biggest city!  From there its a 30 minute drive up into the mountains to Wulingyuan, a small town at one of the entrances to the park.

the nice thing about the park is that its closed to most outside vehicles.  even big tour buses have to park outside.  everyone has to board the park's fleet of free shuttle buses (included in the 3 day entry pass). 

The bus winds up into the mountains through some great scenery, including a resevoir, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.

We got off on the 'Golden Whip Stream' trail,  which winds through a valley surrounded by high cliffs.

There's a critical rule of thumb you quickly pick up on at Zhangjiajie:  Stay away from the bus stops and the parking lots whenever possible. That's where all the domestic tour groups full of old people, country bumpkins and school kids are....  they usually don't venture more than a 5 minute walk from these hubs.  Of course its impossible to get away from them completely,  since they put the bus stops near some of the best scenery... I imagine during peak holiday weekends it must be really bad even further away. :-P

The Golden Whip stream is ok,  not quite the Yosemite River...

facilities wise everything is pretty well done in the park,  there's paved paths everywhere (even quite remote areas), so no need to trample the ground... 

What? wild monkeys?!?  (stay tuned for this...)

decent amount of English signage, but its not hard to get lost on some of the smaller trails... and the park is BIG.  you gotta keep track of time to make sure you don't head off somewhere and get lost til after sunset...

Because this is China, 1.3 billion people strong, where human labor is one of the cheapest commodities,  they have sedan chair rides too.  According to the signage at some of their stops, you pay depending on how far they have to take you.  It wasn't cheap (~300-400 rmb for a reasonable far ride),  but considering its going straight uphill in many cases, that's a bargain.

Of course I scoffed at the notion,  but after a few days of hiking up and down mountains, the thought of outsourcing for someone else's legs seemed to be less preposterous.    

That said, this is definitely not a job I'd want....  you may have great calf definition after a few years of this job,  but I can imagine the dread when you see some big rich obnoxious slob come up and ask you to carry his ass up the 50 flights of stairs...

Case in point!

Rather than keep following the creek through the valley, we decided it would be better to get up out of the valley to see the scenery from the top rather than from the bottom...

It was pretty hardcore....  not sure what the change in elevation is,  but it was at least 45 minutes straight up.... many people couldn't handle it and had to make frequent stops.... and yes, that is someone being carried up in the chair.

Once you do actually get up to the top, you see it was totally worth it -

These are the 'stone forests' of sandstone...

I have too many great shots,  hard to pick a few best ones to share... 

Some of the best shots are off my iPhone actually... in addition to the panorama mode,  i had my Olloclip with me for good wide angle shots.

Here's a panorama....

definitely not the place to come if you're afraid of heights.... looks like at least a few hundred feet down from here... 

I think this shot from my Olloclip's fisheye better conveys the immediacy of the drop! :-P

over this one gap they had a steel bridge...

yikes.   if you have trouble at the railing, definitely don't try the bridge...  actually it was shakey too...  how much do you trust Chinese bridge craftsmanship? :-P But the view was worth it!    I totally felt like I was in Avatar!  :-P

Speaking of Avatar... since this is China,  there is a great deal of trail side entrepreneurship besides just the sedan chair carrying guys.  There's places selling food and drinks and trinkets all over the place.  Also lots of photographers doing instant photo printing...   many of them seem to think that the mountains and rock formations aren't enough, so they need to spice it up with some 'Avatar' -

the worst example of this was one place where they actually have one of those flying things that you can sit on and take a picture (not sure if this guy charges more than the non-flying thing photographers.... but amazingly no matter how stupid, there was always a willing customer for whatever someone was trying to sell here... 

Even the 'vanilla' photos weren't spared.  they have the PC and printer right there, so on the spot they'll Photoshop your best shot and add some titles and a disembodied extra set of heads....  we were lucky to have reasonable good weather while we were there, but I imagine on foggy days, they'll offer to Photoshop you into a picture taken on a clear day...

This place is known as literally 'The #1 Sky Bridge'...  a bit presumptuous wouldn't you say?  its nice but not that nice. :-P back side Not bad, but hard to do it justice compared to seeing it in person... After a good 1/2 day of hiking around the edges of these cliffs,  we headed up to another shuttle bus stop,  the Bailong Elevator ( 百龙电梯)... 

this is the view from the top of the Elevator...  pretty nice.

So what is the elevator?  for some reason they decided to put a giant glass walled elevator on the side of one of these cliffs. This is what it looks like from the bottom.    I guess the idea is you're supposed to start at the bottom, going up and the view gets better as you go up... but since we were coming from the top down, I was underimpressed. Especially because you have to pay extra for this 'ride'...   It looks like they haven't been keeping up on the maintenance (like many things in China...)  I suppose that should be an area of concern.... seeing as its actually over 1000 ft from top to bottom (the bottom ~1/3 is inside the mountain, so nothing to see).  I took a video but not worth sharing. :-P

Here's the view from the bottom...

That was the end of day 1....  I'll share day 2 shortly (hopefully day 3 too!) :-P