Date: 2018-10-28 to 2018-11-01

After one more sleeper train from Chengdu to Yichang and a crowded train I arrived in Zhangjiajie town. It was 18:30 and still dark, so I had contacted my hotel near the Yangjiajie entry of the park, to pick me up at the station. After a really off-road like journey over one hour, we finally reached the hotel.

Man was I am happy to have a real room with bed again which is not moving like on the sleeper train. The hotel and the staff were really nice and prepared dinner for me.

Next morning I talked with the hotel manager Lucas to give me some hints for the planning of my hiking routes. He was really nice, but the estimated times on his map were for Chinese hikers. Well Lucas himself told me last day, that most Chinese tourists do not like hiking, they only want to get to the famous spots. Knowing this, it is no wonder that in the park there is a complete bus system, cable cars to the peaks and even an elevator.

Well I picked up the schematic hiking map from Lucas and started my adventure. And it was a really impressive one. Well I hiked up the mountains, because I had a lot of time and it was really worth it because there are a lot of viewpoints on the way. But I was really the only one on these paths which made the experience even better. Because when I reached the top I had the Chinese hiking style again with a lot of people and queues to the famous viewpoints. It is really stunning to be there and see these unbelievable stone pillars. But as soon as I left the common route, which was with the elevator down, I was alone again on the stairway downwards. When I was down in the valley it was 3 pm, so I decided to explore it a bit. Well suddenly this bit was 2 hours and it was getting dark. I decided to take a more direct path which looked good in the beginning, but after half-way it turned out to be abandoned, and the surrounding apes made crazy sounds, so I felt a little creepy going there. But the path was amazing and so after a while I felt like Indiana Jones. So I hiked up a lot of stairs to a pass, where I was rewarded with an unbelievably great sunset view. I enjoyed my time there even though I was in a hurry to come down to the village back to the hotel, because night was coming.

So After this rest I hiked really fast and reached the hotel at about 18:30. So I hiked a path estimated for 3 hours in one and a half including a rest at the pass — not bad.

Next day I started again early morning and did a great tour around in the park with about 11 hours hiking.

And on the third day I relaxed a bit and made my laundry and going to the huang shan village in the afternoon.

So finally the day of departure came. This time I took a bus back to Zhangjiajie town, but I had a lot of time till my train was departing, so I decided to go up to Tianamen mountain. It is very famous because of it looks like a gate and some wing-suit flyers already used it in red bull spots to fly through. But I did it this time the Chinese hiking way. Going up by cable-car, driving by escalators inside the mountain to coming out at the gate and finally going back by bus. Never had such an artificial mountain experience ..