After such a packed day the day before we didn’t think Zhangjiajie could possibly have anything left to blow our minds with, we were wrong…
We set off early taking a public bus from the centre of town to the Jinbian Stream gate of the National Forrest Park. The bus stops just outside of the entrance to the park, giving us a five-minute walk to slowly take in what we were approaching. From this side of the park the sandstone quartz pillars tower above the main gates and stand in stark contrast to the sky making them look like a painted set from a movie.
As you enter the park the first thing you come across is a beautiful garden that opens up to a fully uninterrupted view of the peaks. From here we had two choices, walk along the valley floor by the Golden Whip stream to where we had ended our day yesterday or climb one of the stone pillars. We decided to climb the pillar (despite not actually knowing how long it took or where it ended up). Before we started climbing I thought it would be a good idea to have a quick snack. My first mistake was not checking my surroundings; seconds after opening my snickers bar I saw it, a huge monkey started making its way towards me, slowly at first but then it picked up the pace. Being the stubborn human I am, I was determined not to waste my snickers bar, I took one big bite and threw the remainder as far from me as I possibly could! This satisfied the larger monkey who chased it off into the bushes but then I had to get passed his two friends sitting on the stone steps in front of me. Despite the fact I had visibly thrown my chocolate snack far from myself, these monkeys looked ready to search my backpack for anything else that might be edible within it. I took a deep breath and, hiding behind friend the whole way, ran past them as they were distracted by a group of Chinese tourists.
This was perhaps the hottest day of our trip and the shade of the trees seemed to do nothing to stifle the heat. The Chinese love hiking, but it is not hiking like we would think of it; every trail is marked by steep concrete steps that seem to go on forever as they disappear into the trees, this makes it almost impossible to know exactly how much further is left to go. After about an hour of walking we came across a fork in the path and luckily met some Chinese tourists on their way back down the mountain; they advised us to take the path leading to Huangshi Village as it would give us “the second-best view in the whole park” (the first being the Avatar Mountain view that we had seen the day before).
It took us another hour to climb to the top of Huangshizhai (there is a toilet near the fork in the road… I advise using it if you need to as there isn’t another one until the top. Don’t make the same mistake I did! I was too scared there were going to be large bugs inside to check it out). We had been warned the whole way up that there were monkeys waiting to pounce on anyone with a backpack and after my experience at the bottom and Karin being jumped on by a monkey the previous day we took that warning seriously! We found out that this warning was maybe a slight exaggeration when we reached the top; the monkeys were definitely interested in us, but they did not appear to be aggressive or after us in any way. Justin even managed to befriend one and it trusted us enough to eat right out of our hands. It was so gentle and just sat on the fence reaching into our palms for a nut when we offered it. In the end we drew quite a crowd of people all lining up to feed this monkey and eventually more monkeys showed up, we took this as our que to move on and check out more of the viewing points.
Huangshi Village is a loop of the top of Huangshizhai pillar that offers a view of the sandstone quarts pillars from just about every angle. Seeing the park from so many angles really gives you a scale of just how big it is! The loop takes around half an hour to complete if you don’t stop at every point and at one section you can even see across to the Natural bridge where we had been the day before.
There is the option to either take a cable car down or if you aren’t too tired from the way up there is a different path down the mountain that leads back to the same entrance we came in. We chose to take the path down as it is 72 yuan to take the cable car. This seems to be the unpopular option as we hardly saw another person on the way down and the path is definitely less travelled than the way up with moss growing between the stairs and even a bridge that had been almost completely reclaimed by the forest. It took us around an hour to reach the bottom and from there we decided to go for a short walk along the river. We spent about half an hour relaxing next to the river before catching the bus back to our hostel.
This was my favourite day in Zhangjiajie just because of how relaxed the day was, we didn’t feel the need to rush anywhere and there was plenty to do and see at Huangshi Village. Having the opportunity to feed a wild monkey on the top of a sandstone pillar in China alone puts this at the top of my list of favourite days full stop! It was just a once in a life time experience! “He who fails to climb Huangshizhai, need not have come to Zhangjiajie”.
Check out the Vlog from this day here: Zhanjiajie, Hunan – April 3rd 2018
Trip Info:
- Zhangjiajie 1982 Chujian International Youth Hostel: http://www.booking.com/Share-ayycez 135 yuan (£15 for 3 nights)
- Zhanjiajie National Forest park ticket: 248 yuan (about £27.60) allows entry to the park for 4 days.
- Cable car ticket (if you choose not walk): 72 yuan each way (about £8)
- Local Bus: 10 yuan each way (about £1 per ticket)
Well Travelled Lass 