Sore legs, disfunctional maps, and greats views - 张家界 (Zhangjiajie)

One of many beautiful views in the park

This past weekend, Sam and I headed to Zhangjiajie, a five hour train ride North-West of Changsha to enjoy a weekend of hiking in the beautiful sandstone karsts that inspired the Avatar film. Searching the internet for things to do and see and a place to stay got me extremely excited. All the pictures I saw looked magnificent and I could only imagine how beautiful it would be in real life. Pictures honestly don't do this place justice! It is so unbelievably magical!

We arrived in Zhangjiajie in the afternoon on Friday and grabbed a bite to eat and found a bus that would take us to the forest park. We had booked room in a hostel that was inside the park, but was  a bit of a hike so we made sure we had plenty of time to make it up top of the hill before it got dark (we were told it would take about 3-4 hours to reach the hostel from the park gate). Once inside, we were both so taken aback by how impressive the tall thin pillars of sandstone looked from below and were stoked to take in the view from the top of the hill. We trudged up the hill with our heavy packs, both discouraged by how much effort it took as we are both outdoor enthusiasts. It took us about and hour or so to do the uphill portion of the trail we needed to take and we got to the top at the perfect time of day, just as the sun was starting to set, leaving the sky with a beautiful orange glow. We stopped for a while to catch our breath and grab some great photos and headed to the hostel. We ended up sharing a room with the only other foreigners staying there and decided that we would all go out and venture the park the next day together.

The next morning we set out to do some exploring. Only one problem, Chinese people are absolutely horrendous at making maps! For one, you are never guaranteed that North is facing up on the map. The maps for Zhangjiajie were awful..we were lucky enough to find one that had English on it (the one with only Chinese was a nightmare with characters everywhere so even if you knew the characters of where you wanted to go, it took ages to find them on the map). The trails were marked and colour coded but the coding system made no frickin sense even when we translated it to English. I think the biggest problem with the map had to be the fact that there was no altitude on them, therefore you had no idea if you were going to have to go uphill or downhill which made is a bit frustrating when trying to budget your time. We spent the day exploring a bit of the park that we were told was worth seeing (it's a massive national park and you could spend a week there and still not see everything) and our group split in two by mid day to see some different things. Sam, Alicia (a fellow ESL teacher we met from America) and I ended back down at the base and decided to hit up one of the spots that I was told was a must see and figured out a way to get back to our hostel from there. We gave ourselves 4 hours to do the route, and on the map that seemed obtainable....baha! what were we thinking, This is China, we should have known that we would end up on a wild adventure...one that was well worth it I must say. As we started to walk the path (a cement path and stairs leading up the mountain should I add...I think there must be a saying in China stating that no rock shall be unnamed and no mountain un-staired-they just don't do hiking like we do back home) and were pleasantly surprised to see that it was a path less travelled on-great! No annoying Chinese tourists taking pictures of us and some peace and quite from tour guides rambling on over loud speakers in Chinese. We started to walk and the path started to head uphill as we assumed it would. But then the path went up and over one ridge, and started going down..not what we had thought..and back up again. We reached some unexpected forks in the road and were confident we were on the right track. Finally, we made it to the top of a ridge and got an amazing view! We stopped for 15 minutes to do some yoga and continued on and slowly but surely it started to grow dark. We looked at the map and realized it had taken us a lot longer than expected and that we were only halfway to our hostel! Thank goodness we all had flashlights and as dusk fell, we trudged on..up and around and down and up again and back down again and up. The view through this path would have been phenomenal but unfortunately we didn't get to see all of it as it grew darker and darker. Six hours (double the time we had budgeted) later, we hitched a ride on the main road back to our hostel and cold, hungry, and exhausted sat in the lounge to share the story of our crazy day with the rest of our group.

The rest of my time in Zhangjiajie was fantastic! The park has sub-tropical foliage and is home to tons of wild monkeys. Some of which we got extremely close to and we fed a few some orange and watched as they peeled and ate it.. absolutely wicked to see! There are so many great spots around the park to stop at and enjoy the beautiful view and Sam, who is a photographer got some gorgeous shots. You should check out his website and look at them (TuckMeister Photography) On Sunday afternoon, we headed back down the hill one last time which was absolutely killer as the amount of hiking I did throughout the weekend had started to take it's toll on my body and we took the bus back to the train station. We couldn't get seats on the train, as it was full, so we got standing tickets and sat on the ground in between two of the carriages for the five hours home. I now know what leg cramps are truly like..all those cheer clinics throughout the years feel like a cake walk now! I was struggling to walk the first couple days back at work but it was all worth it!

Another great adventure in China at one of the most beautiful national parks in the country!