Zhāngjiājiè National Forest Park, China
When I was living and working in China, the school that I was working at gave us an expected break for a few days. My good friend, Greg, and I decided to take a trip to the National Park in the Hunan Province that inspired the “Hallelujah” mountains in the film “Avatar.” My friend wrote an excellent blog post so it´s definitely worth a read if you want to learn more about it.
I characterize Greg as the kind of guy who likes to travel in style. He knows what's good and he won't put up with anything less than that.
So, for the first time ever, we made the splurge to fly business class. We got to hang out in the business lounge and eat their free food. I also helped myself to their wine. I felt like a movie star.
Here's a picture of me pretending I'm fancy.
Greg is a bit of a ham, but I love him.
After our luxurious flight, we checked into a hostel on the cheap-end. Greg and I opted for private rooms so that we didn't hate each other by the end of the trip.
Despite living in China for as long as I did, I missed out on a lot of opportunities to travel within China. During my time there, I was able to see Macau, Hong Kong, Beijing, Xián and Shenzhen. But the thing is that China is a massive country and that each part is unique and special. One of my favorite parts of this trip was just the opportunity to be so fully immersed in Chinese culture. We encountered very few people that could speak English so we really had to make do with our limited range of Chinese. Without a doubt, it was incredibly frustrating at times. But, I really enjoyed the challenge of trying to figure out how to get around.
Greg and I took a quick taxi to the entrance of the park. From the entrance, you could already see the mountains and I was immediately impressed. We purchased our tickets and then took a shuttle bus to a higher portion.
I love bus rides. I don´t know if it comes from all of my years taking road trips with my family but I absolutely love to just sit and watch the world go by. The bus ride to the top was really beautiful.
If you do get the chance to read my friend´s blog post on the topic, then you´ll see that we had some pretty rainy weather during our trip there. We didn´t get a lot of clear views of the mountains and it was very, very cold. Bad weather happens and it sucks. But it's something us mortals have very little control over.
Personally, I thought that the weather made the landscape kind of magical looking. It reminded me of a fairytale. To me, the landscapes looked exactly like the ancient Chinese silk paintings of the clouds over the mountains.
We started our day with a ride up the cable car. It was very cloudy but I always love a cable car.
After we reached the top, we took another shuttle to another area that we could walk around. By this point, we were really high up so it was hard to see much of anything. We did get some nice views though.
Since we were so engulfed in clouds, we decided to try to head to a lower part so that we could try and see things a little better. There was a tourist tram in the park so we decided to play tourists and ride the tram wherever it took us.
At this point, we made a mistake. We were a little turned around and weren´t sure where to go next. We saw a trail next to the tram and decided to hike it. The mistake that we made was that this trail was the one that would take us right back up to where the cable car dropped us off. The trail was nice and it was beautiful, but we just walked around in a circle. Oops.
It turned out to be an even bigger mistake because Greg ended up injuring his knee on the walk. We were kind of trapped because it was our first day in the park and there weren´t a lot of options. Greg made the decision to get carried up in a caravan by some of the nice guys working there. He was a prince for about 20 minutes and he paid everyone extremely generously.
By this point, we were both pretty exhausted so we took a long break and got some food. There were a lot of monkeys wandering around snatching tourists food. I got my orange stolen by one of these monkeys. I screamed like a little kid and ran away. People definitely laughed at me and somewhere in the world, there is a video on a Chinese website of me screaming and crying while monkeys chased me.
We decided to call it a day at this point and headed back to our hostel. We bought some medical supplies to help Greg with his knee and got dinner.
During my first year in China, I had worked with a great co-teacher that was from the hunan province and I´d been lucky enough to go out to a few meals with him. Hunan food is spicy and flavorful. I was a bit let down by what Greg and I actually ended up eating. Maybe we just picked the wrong restaurant or maybe the food wasn´t as nice because we were in a touristy area. Either way, the food was just okay.
I shamelessly stole these pictures from Greg because I didn´t take any of my own. He´s a much better foodie than I am anyway.
We bought some snacks on the street. I had a beer and Greg and I bonded in the run-down lobby of the hostel.
For the next day, we decided to put our very bad Chinese to the test by asking advice from our receptionist. After consulting him, we decided to tackle the glass bridge and try and see the “Hallelujah” mountains in the same day. To get to the glass bridge, we went to the local bus station and took a bus for about 40 minutes. We got lucky and everyone working at the bus station spoke good English.
I sat back, drank my energy drink and watched the world go by.
The weather continued to be extremely rainy and overall, it was very dreary and crowded. I could tell that on a clear day, it would have been absolutely amazing.
We had a lot of fun watching other people tip toe along the glass. Some people were even bold enough to jump. Despite all of the rain, the bridge wasn´t slippery at all so we had no problems.
Around the area, there are other things to do besides the bridge. Unfortunately for us, a lot of the other areas were closed so we really just waited in line, walked on the bridge and then left. Given our limited time, this worked out for us.
We took the bus back to the main entrance of the park and then walked back. Along the way, we found a really nice restaurant at one of the hotels. We were both really hungry and cold so the meal was a warm welcome. It ended up being one of our best meals.
We then walked the rest of the way in the dreary weather and took the bus shuttle in the park to the section with the mountains that inspired Avatar. In order to get to the heavenly pillar or Hallelujah” mountains, you have to take a shuttle bus to a pavilian area and then a second shuttle bus from there.
Around the main pavilian, we got the best views from the whole trip. For me, this was the most beautiful section. Here are some pictures from that portion of the trip.
Then, we took another shuttle to visit the Heavenly Pillar. I also stole this pictures from Greg.
As you can see, it was very cloudy and mysterious.
Both Greg and I were a little disappointed by the view or lack thereof. However, we both have a great sense of humor so we ended up just laughing and joking around a lot. Without a doubt, Greg was the best part of my trip.
We had a massive feast that evening. Once again, I´ve stolen Greg´s picture. (Thanks ).
For the final part of our trip, we moved to a really beautiful hotel closer to Tianmen Mountain.
We started our day off with another cable ride. Did I mention I like cable rides, because I like cable rides.
We wondered around the park and listened to the music performers. We were pretty cold, pretty wet and pretty tired, but I was grateful for the good company.
Greg even obliged me when I wanted to take cheesy pictures writing my dreams on a piece of ribbon to tie to a tree. I could feel his judgment, but he didn´t say anything.
We did manage to get a few good pictures once we returned to the bottom of the mountain. Here is one of the clearest pictures from the trip.
We returned to our hotel for the night and had yet another feast. We ate to our hearts content and then slept in our warm beds.
Here's some more of Greg's pictures from our feast.
Overall, this trip gave me an appreciation for friendship. There were a lot of challenging moments and I was incredibly grateful to have Greg´s company during those hard moments. This trip was also a reminder of how challenging it can be to travel inside of China.
