July 7 – July 9 : Zhangjiajie

The city of Zhangjiajie has nothing of real tourist interest to offer. It is still a good place to make your base while you explore the surrounding highlights, as the high-speed train station is located here and the city is in immediate proximity to Tianmen Mountain. Zhangjiajie National Park can be reached by bus in about 45 minutes.

The national park features one of the most unique and iconic landscapes in China. Most people choose to spend two days here, but I found that the park can be reasonably covered in one day. From the city, you can grab either a taxi or an early bus towards Wulingyuan, where the main entrance of the park is located. You can buy a ticket on-site as there is no limitation on how many people can enter the park per day. This has one downside: as the whole area is quite large, there are some places where shuttle buses bring people from one site to another. Be prepared to wait about 30-45 minutes in line before entering these shuttles, 3 or 4 times during your visit to the park, depending on the route you choose.

Tianmen Mountain has gained popularity through Instagram because of its iconic hole and the stairway that leads up to it. Be aware that you can only go up and down via cable car, and these tickets are indeed limited, so it’s better to book a day or even two in advance. Ask your hotel reception as they usually know how to navigate through the WeChat or Alipay app to buy the tickets.

There are two cable car stations: one in the center of Zhangjiajie city (this is about 7 km long, takes 15 minutes to go up, and is actually one of the longest cable cars in the world) and another one about 5 km outside the city. You can choose between three options for booking your ticket:

• Line A: go up from the station in the city center and come down at the one further away.
• Line B: go up from the station further away and come down in the city center.
• Line C: go both up and down by the station further away.

I chose Line B (Line A was sold out), but I highly recommend using Line C, even if it means that you need to get a taxi twice to move between the city and the 5 km away station. The reason for this is that the cable cars are much bigger (about 20 seats). When I went up through that station there was no crowd at all; I just bought my ticket and got on the cable car without any waiting. When I came down, however (at the other station), I had to wait 3 (!) hours on top of the mountain before I could enter a cable car. This was a huge waste of time, especially since the sun had set in the meantime, so the sights that one might get during this long cable car ride were not even visible anymore. I suppose that the C line offers a crowdless experience both ways.