China 2025 – April 18

We have purchased tickets covering entry to the park for 4 days and unlimited cable car and elevator rides. My advanced age entitles me to a significantly discounted ticket. Zhangjiajie national forest park is massive, and the Yolo resort where we will be staying is located in the remote upper reaches, but we are relaxed and confident, having received explicit instructions from Carol, our Yolo contact, how to get there from the east gate. Our instructions are: catch the bus to the bottom of the Tianzi mountain cableway and take the cable car; at the top of Tianzi mountain catch the bus to Helong Park; walk through the park and enjoy the views; exit the park at the other end and take the bus to Yangjiajie; tell the driver to drop you off at the Yolo resort, which is a five-minute walk from the road. Simple enough.

On approaching the east gate of the park, we are amazed at the number of people pouring in, most of them tour groups. Long queues are a distinct possibility. The east gate precinct of the park is like a busy bus terminus. Free buses take people to various places of interest. Queues have built up everywhere. We find the bus queue we need, but then learn that the Tianzi cable cars are not working and no one can say when they will be operational again.

We have no contingency plan for non-operational facilities, but we have the phone number of Alex who works in Yolo. He suggests we take a bus to the ten-miles gallery from where we can climb Tianzi mountain if we like or take another bus to the Bailong elevator, ascend it, pass through the Avatar mountains in Yuanjiajie and take another bus to Yangjiajie, from where we can catch the Tianzi mountain bus and be dropped off at Yolo.

We take the bus to the ten miles gallery. This is a gallery of natural features: green forests and iconic sandstone pillars. After a leisurely stroll of much less than ten miles, we decide not to go up Tianzi mountain on foot, a three-hour ascent. Instead we take a bus to the Bailong elevator, at 320 metres the highest outdoor elevator in the world. When we get there, the length of the queue shocks us. It’s our first real experience of a crowd in China, not paltry hundreds of people but a mass of thousands. We don’t fancy languishing in a queue for hours, especially in such glorious weather. Back to Alex who suggests we do the golden whip stream walk, then catch the bus that takes people to the Huangshi village cableway but not get off there, stay on until the bus reaches the end of its route, climb a short staircase, take another bus to the bottom of the Yangjiajie cableway, ride the cable car to Yangjiajie, then take the Tianzi mountain bus from Yangjiajie and ask the driver to drop us off at the Yolo resort. We consult our map, which, contrary to what we were told about maps of the national park, is not difficult to follow. We can see on it the route advised by Alex. The golden whip stream is one of the park’s ‘must-do’ features. This is how we start our adventure in the Zhangjiajie national forest park.

The weather is sunny, late 20s temperature, with no sign of the forecast rain. Rain is also forecast for tomorrow, but I will believe it when I see it. Golden whip are tiny golden fish that inhabit the ever-present stream. The walk is easy, mostly flat, but we pause on numerous occasions to take in and photograph the magnificent surrounds. Forest walks are, as a rule, not so much about scenery as they are about being one with nature, a privileged guest in a habitat teeming with life. But my attention cannot help being diverted, on both sides of the stream, by tall sandstone columns penetrating the forest canopy and reaching up to the sky.

As we progress, the crowd thins, until we go past the half-way mark when we encounter walkers from the other end. Most of the people I’ve seen so far are members of local tour groups, many of them old, probably retired. It appears the park caters for old people, equipped as it is with cableways, an outdoor elevator and free buses transporting people to popular sites like the Avatar mountains that everyone wants to see. After an almost seven-kilometre amble, we reach the end of the golden whip stream walk, the first activity to mark off our list.

We board the bus for the Huangshi village cable car. Everyone else in the bus gets off there. We reach the end of the bus route a few minutes later and go looking for the short staircase. There are only a few people about and no tour groups, which puzzles us. And then we find out why. The staircase is not short, about 400 steps and, we figure, the reason this is not a frequented route to Yangjiajie and Tianzi. At the top of the stairway we catch the bus to the cableway which will take us to Yangjiajie.

The cable car ride brings us close enough to appreciate the magnitude and splendour of the sandstone monoliths that dominate the landscape. We discover something else about this amazing national park. The cable car is soaring up a steep mountain, the summit a speck in the sky. It means that the Zhangjiajie national park is part high country. We learn later that the high country comprises Yangjiajie where we are now headed, Yuanjiajie where the Avatar mountains are located, Huangshi village and Tianzi mountain. The golden whip stream, ten-mile gallery, the bottom of the Bailong elevator and the bottom of the Tianzi mountain cableway are in the low-lying parts.

We reach Yangjiajie. There are some interesting walks and lookouts, which we plan to do, but not now. It is still early, not yet midday, so now that we know how to reach our hotel, we decide to take the bus to explore Helong park and Tianzi mountain, and afterwards take the Yangjiajie bus back to our hotel. I feel growing familiarity with the layout of this spectacular national park.

On the way to Tianzi mountain we note the junction at which we need to get off for Yolo. We reach the Helong park bus terminus, disembark, walk up a short ramp and find ourselves outside a long row of eateries. There aren’t many people because the Tianzi mountain cable car is out of action, but the eateries appear to be readying for lunchtime. There are other ways to get here, as we have discovered. We find a spot to sit and eat the leftovers of yesterday’s dinner. They taste better today, maybe because we are hungry. Lunch done, we run the gauntlet of the eateries and a gathering crowd and enter Helong park. There are signs pointing to various lookouts like Warrior training horses, Yubi peaks, Maiden with a basket of flowers, all of them sandstone pillars. There are hundreds of them rising above the forests below. This is beyond anything I imagined. Even the YouTube videos we watched in the weeks leading to this trip did not capture the true splendour of these giants.

At 3.30 we pull ourselves away and return to the bus stop where we will take the Yangjiajie bus to our hotel. We show the driver our destination, and he nods, but we have to alert him when we reach it because he has forgotten. He stops the bus and lets us get off. There are two possible roads to take. We try one, which leads to a dead end, then take the other, which passes through a tea estate, bringing back memories of Sri Lanka’s tea country where I worked for three years. At the end of the road is Yolo, a pleasant rectangular two-storey building, with a colonial European feel. A large white canopy dominates the front yard. There is no one about, but our arrival seems to have stirred Alex, our helper. He arrives, stretching and sleepy-eyed, to greet us. He directs us to the office where we check-in and are given the key to our room, which is located in a similar building behind this one. Alex tells us not to forget to go and see the sunset. He will take us around 6pm.

The tea estate is picturesque, like the estate I worked on in Sri Lanka, but it is much smaller and not a single tea plucker to be seen. There is no tea factory either. It is a small-scale enterprise, maybe a hobby project. We notice a few European tourists, mainly Germans. The climb to see the sunset is a fairly serious climb through a forest to a hilltop. Worth the effort because the scenery is stunning even though fairly thick clouds cover the sun.

After a forgettable dinner, we retire to our room and sleep follows soon after.