Well, they aren’t actually the Hallelujah Mountains from the movie Avatar, but the Tourism Department would like you to think so. They’ve spent a good bit of publicity on Avatar posters, clips from the movie which are spliced into real shots of the park rolling on the shuttle bus screens, a statue, and they even named one of the great pillars “Avatar Mountain.”
Sadly, there were no direhorses to ride around on and the mountains do not seem to float. Those disappointments we could handle, the mountains still being quite impressive, as you can see. But there was another, more sinister, barrier to our full enjoyment of the park – a living, pulsing, ubiquitous barrier that met us at every venue: tourist groups! Veritable hordes of tourists with their ice cream, flags, full trekking gear, and ridiculous large sun hats. We tried to run away from them but that is hard to do when you’re not supposed to leave the path. I managed with a little success to keep them out of my photos…but the noise they made was incredible!
Someone had the bright idea to sell them whistles. The result was a constant cacophony assaulting our eardrums. They shouted, shoved, swarmed, and whistled. One may point out that we were part of the horde as well, but that is ridiculous. We did not have whistles.
That first day we took a cable car up to Tianzi Mountain (at whose top there is a McDonald’s) and then walked down mountain steps for over 2 hours. My calves were still upset about it days later but that strain was not more intense than the noise and bustle. It is very difficult to mediate on the grandeur of creation and the smallness of humanity while children are running about screaming with squirt guns behind you and a mother is assisting her toddler to wee on the sidewalk not three feet from where you’ve set your bag.
But I’m complaining too much. Despite the entire nation of China showing up at the park on the very day we were there, the views were worth seeing and it isn’t as if the rest of the tourists each didn’t want a bit more peace and quiet too. Each towering spire still solemnly points to its maker. And every now and then we’d find a quiet spot to silently watch the giants.
As James was saying, the scene is really too large to take in – in the same way that the Grand Canyon is too large. Photos are deceiving, particularly when the photographer didn’t have a wide angle lens. It’s interesting how natural wonders seem to be larger in real life while manmade wonders seem to be smaller in real life than their photos indicate.
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- ride up
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- view out the plane window
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- our cozy hostel room
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- park entrance
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- park map
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- stinky tofu cart
Now on to the practical schedule – and educational nature – of our activity in case the intrepid reader is trying to plan.
The real name of the place is unexpectedly fun to say: Zhangjiajie National Forest Park (pronounced Jong-Ja-Gi-A). We were there only 2 days. We flew in from Changsha and arrived in Zhangjiajie city via our propeller plane around 10:00am. From there we taxied to Wulingyuan, which is a tourist village right outside the park gate, and got a hostel.
The first task was to bargain with the notorious taxi drivers who inhabit all airports. Allow me to direct your attention to a useful little app (and website) called Wiki Triip. This pocket fount of knowledge is a collection of travel advice from hundreds of contributors who’ve been to the sites. Thankfully, it’s very specific. So armed with knowledge, I marched up to the taxi driver and when he insisted on our paying 380rmb ($58) to drive to Wulingyuan village, I confidently protested and gave my best effort at looking appalled.
He asked for my price so I said, 130rmb ($20). “But,” the driver countered in Mandarin, pulling out his map and spreading it across the trunk of his taxi, “It’s 100km to Wulingyuan.” Lies. I looked it up on my phone for him and showed him that it was less than 40km. Then I pointed to the pricing sticker on his window which said how much each kilometer cost and again protested that his price was too expensive.
He then said something that I didn’t understand (the whole conversation was in Chinese, of course) and we walked away. As anticipated, he followed, lowering the price in negligible increments that would’ve taken days to get to my price. He got down to 320. But we firmly insisted on not paying more than 150 (the usual price though still a tad high. 120-130 is truly fair).
Well, he laughed and sighed and brushed us off as crazy and said lots of things that we didn’t understand that may have been mildly insulting. But when we began to walk away again, his boss piped up and accepted our offer.
Now it was the driver’s turn to be shocked. He laughed a little to his buddies and begrudgingly led us back to his taxi. It’s a small airport and though a popular place, we were the only customers at the time, which put supply and demand in our favor.
Well, he laughed and sighed and brushed us off as crazy and said lots of things that we didn’t understand that may have been mildly insulting. But when we began to walk away again, his boss piped up and accepted our offer.
Now it was the driver’s turn to be shocked. He laughed a little to his buddies and begrudgingly led us back to his taxi. It’s a small airport and though a popular place, we were the only customers at the time, which put supply and demand in our favor.
We had booked a nice little hostel in Wulingyuan. Using Google maps once again, we found it, dropped off our bags, and headed into the park. 5 hours later we hobbled out, having walked down thousands of stairs, spent hundreds of rmb on entrance fees, and battled the feral pack of tourists.
Perhaps you think I’m exaggerating about the barbarian hordes. If so, I invite you to watch the video of them racing to the buses. Even the old ladies will knock you down. Incidentally, I did see one sign reading “tourism prevention coordination room” but I couldn’t tell that it was doing any good.
The plan for day #2 was to explore part of the other side of the sizable park. In order to do this we needed to take a bus to the other gate; I felt that I needed a coffee first. To my surprise the place that said “… coffee” didn’t actually seem to know much about coffee. They printed a menu out for me in Chinese – naturally, because if I couldn’t speak Chinese I could probably read Chinese.
“Kan bu dong” – I told her I couldn’t read (which is always a little humbling to say) but luckily, my phone could. The Waygo app has a pretty fair track record about translating so I flipped it on and placed it over a menu item.
It literally read, no joke, “be afraid” ….then quickly flipped to the correct translation which was something about coffee or milk. I should have taken its first warning though because the latte I ordered was definitely made of instant coffee.
An hour or so later, with the help of a few nice students, we were on the correct bus and in the park. We first went up to the Front Garden area via cable car. Many of the photos that are looking down onto the mountains were taken from that area.
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- catching a litter
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- so many stairs
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- brown monkeys
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- James helping my photography
The brown monkeys pictured were also up there. Thankfully, brown monkeys are much more placid and don’t seem too bothered by the ravenous tourists. I distinguish the brown from the grey for the simple reason that grey monkeys are evil. We were old acquaintances from India and here they were no different. The day before I’d run into some grey monkeys and one reached up for my pocket so, having nothing else to do, I kicked it away.
In general, it’s not a wise idea to threaten or provoke grey monkeys. I had a standoff with a grey monkey in India once and it ended up following me home, pounding on the door, and destroying the plants on the porch. But it is likewise not wise to let one’s little hand slip into your pocket.
I don’t want rabies (a friend was bitten in Thailand and for safety, had to get shots) and so I was fully ready to punt one should it get too close. Thankfully I was able to scuttle away before it realized it might want revenge.
After that area, we headed over to the Golden Whip Stream …which is a walk that we thought would never end – a beautiful walk – but a long one after miles of stairs. After about 6km, we found a bus. It’s a nice view (when you can see over the crowd of sun hats) and well bricked but it’s strewn with souvenir shops. However, it did allow us to look up at the mountain pillars from ground level.
We escaped from the park around 4:00pm and had a relaxing evening at the hostel – though not in our room – because we’d checked out. Our flight out was that night at 12:25am.
We did have a pretty nice dinner in the village before we left and I swear that the cook was Jackie Chan’s mom. She was this very friendly middle aged lady who kept trying to speak to me in Chinese – she gave me a cheerful thumbs up when I told her the food was tasty just like Jackie Chan does.
Trip Log 8.15.2014
