Zhangjiajie national parc aka Pandora
- meganagathe
- 15 nov. 2017
- 3 min de lecture
We decided to get up early and get the first train to zhianjiajie to visit its national park, famous for its strong resemblance to the land of Pandora in Avatar (movie). In the train we met a really nice Chinese girl, Kun, who was also visiting the park. On the long train ride she shared her typical Chinese snacks and showed us her impressive wedding pictures – the friendliness of people in China and how people just come up and chat with us or help us has so far been really impressive. Once arrived in Zhanjiajie, it takes us another hour in a bus to actually make it to the park, which to our surprise is quite catered to tourists (and by tourists I mean Chinese tourists!), we decide to find a place to store our bag packs and only leave with our camping gear, hoping to find a good spot to plant our tent! 5 minutes in and we are already taken aback about how beautiful the place is, we walk down a road for 2 hours following a beautiful stream in the middle of the famous rock formations, surrounded by lush nature and monkeys just chilling on the road. Our goal is to make it up the rock formations before nightfall to have a good view once we wake up in the morning. Because of the quick nightfall we decide to take a glass elevator up the side of one of the rocks, pretty impressive scenery! When we arrive on top we get a little taste of the views we will be getting the next morning, we are so excited! However, as we get up we realize we haven’t made it to a tent pitching heaven…we are in a really touristy part of the park, all the roads are paved and there is nowhere really to get out of there without taking the elevator again or taking a bus. Because of the nightfall, we decide then to pitch it behind a few bushes and trees along the main empty road. At that point we were half laughing, half freaking out that someone would walk by and ask us to leave, but quickly the guards seemed to leave their shifts and all we were left alone with were the sounds of the many animals (monkeys, insects and who knows what else?!).
We slept surprisingly really well and woke up really early the next morning and got to enjoy some of the most scenic points in the park free of other tourists! The park simply took our breath away, it really looked like Pandora from Avatar! After having seen all the main viewpoints we decided to get off the beaten track and wander down some dirt trails. It felt like we were on our own little adventure, so peaceful and amazing scenery. However, the mood took a turn when we realised we no longer had a clue where we were heading and there was no sign or person in sight to help us! We were trying to make it back in time for the last bus that evening to our next stop ‘fenghuan’ and were starting to get slightly stressed. To not go into all the details of our misadventures there was a lot of running, a lot of map pointing, and a lot trying to make out Chinese directions. Needless to say we did not make it to Fenghuan that evening, we were however pretty proud that we managed to find our way back out of the park, pick up our bags and get as far as Zhanjiajie city (you learn to appreciate the small victories!). By chance we found a really nice cheap room in a hotel right in front of the train station – and what happened next we were not proud of but boy was it good: we ended up with McDonalds takeaway in our bed watching Avatar!
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