What an incredible day! Zhangjiajie National Forest Park is even more beautiful than I expected. I spent almost the entire day inside the park, and I still don't even feel like I've seen a fraction of what it has to offer. Zhangjiajie can be broken down into three words, meaning "boundless family earth."
When I arrived at the hostel yesterday, one of the staff members showed me a map, and planned out my entire day for me. He said it would take me about 7-8 hours, and he was exactly right. I'm so glad he told me where to go, otherwise I would have been completely lost.
I woke up around 6:30am, because I knew the park opened at 7:00am, and I didn't want to get stuck in too many crowds. The woman at the front desk directed me to a local restaurant for a buffet-style breakfast, that was very yummy, and then around 7:30am, I headed to the park. I am currently staying in Wulinyuan, which is a small village about 45 minutes from Zhangjiajie city. It is known for being the most scenic part of the entire park. The Wulinyuan entrance is only about a 5 minute walk from the hostel, so very convenient.
I started off the day with a cable car ride up to the top of Tianzi Mountain. Tian means sky and Zi means son, so the English translation is "Son of the Heavens" At the top of the cable car, there are a couple of paths to choose from, and they all basically take you to the edge of the mountain for a great view of the surrounding landscape. I'd seen a lot of pictures online, but the view still took my breath away. I read a sign that perfectly described the mountains as "bamboo shoots during rainy season," and that is exactly what it looked like. It's amazing to me that they developed completely naturally, because they do not look natural at all. I met a couple of nice families in this area. Neither of them spoke English very well, but they both were really interested in why I was visiting and where I was from. Zhangjiajie is a big tourist spot but more so for Chinese tourists rather than foreigners. Both the families were at the park celebrating their sons' graduation from high school. I'm not 100% sure about this, but I think a lot of people come to the park as a graduation trip - I met three people at the hostel who told me they were here for that reason as well.
I spent some time on Tianzi Mountain before hopping on a shuttle bus to my second stop, Yuanjiajie. This part of the park is actually a village. I hadn't realized that people still lived in the mountains, so it was interesting to see something other than nature. There were a lot of shops and food stalls here as well, which were fun to browse and taste. I took a less popular route at this location. The signs warned that the path would take about three hours to complete and that they didn't suggest it for families. I really liked this part of the park, mostly because there was hardly anyone else there. The whole place wasn't overly busy, but there were still people around, and it was hard to get photos of myself that didn't have other people in them. So, this was a nice hike for me. It was mostly stairs winding up into the forest. I walked for about 45 minutes before I ran into a little food stall. The woman there was really nice, and fried me up some potatoes (m favourite) which was super yummy. I was also getting a little tired of walking alone through the forest, so she pointed me to a shortcut that took me back down to the village in only 10 minutes. I imagine that must be the route she takes to get to a from work. It was definitely not an official path, but that just made it more exciting.
My third stop for the day was the most popular area for tourists. It's also part of Yuanjiajie (Yuan in this case is just a surname), but it gained popularity after the release of the movie Avatar. Rumour has it that the Hallelujah mountains in the movie are based off of the mountains in this area. This area, like the rest of the park was amazing. I kept expecting myself to get used to the landscape but I never did. The best part of this area for me was the "world's highest natural bridge" which is basically an overpass between two of the mountains. I didn't even know I had walked over it until I turned a corner on the path a looked back. It was a little foggy today, but the whole bridge must just light up when the sun comes out.
At around 3:30, I headed back to the hostel to take a shower and a nap before dinner. The hostel has a deal with one of the restaurants close by so I've only been eating there, but it's so yummy I don't mind at all! I enjoyed an eggplant dish and some rice outside on a patio.
My apologies to everyone for the delay in post! I've been having a lot of trouble getting photos to upload onto my site, so that's why they're a little late. Thanks again for reading :)
