Author: Lindsay and Igor

Day 178: Zhangjiajie – Day 1

Even though the Harmona Resort ran a free shuttle bus to the park entrance, the first shuttle didn’t leave until 9AM, which was a much later start than we wanted, so we booked a taxi there and reserved seats for the 5PM return at the end of the day. We made our way to the buffet breakfast (which was AWESOME! Best breakfast spread so far in China – huge selection of Western choices) at 6:30AM, and took off for the park at 7AM.

We had tried to download an English map the night before without any luck, but we had a vague idea of where we wanted to hike, thanks to the Lonely Planet’s “Zhangjiajie in Two Days” recommendations. While most tourists head straight for the Bailong Elevator – a 1,070ft glass elevator which is the tallest lift in the world – we hopped off the shuttle bus early and approached the cliff on foot via the Golden Whip Stream.

 

As is the case everywhere in China, there is construction going on in Zhangjiajie Village (more hotels, no doubt), just outside the park entrance

 

We are shocked at the lack of a line at the ticket counter – at least getting into the park will be easy!

 

The park is massive – according to the Lonely Planet it is divided into three scenic areas. We start off on the canyon floor in the main “Zhangjiajie” section, and head towards the Bailong Elevator, which is the start of a second scenic area

 

While there are a handful of tourists on the trail next to the stream, very few plan to walk the whole way – most just take a few pictures then turn around and catch the bus. We plow forward and soon find ourselves ahead of the crowd

 

We have a clear trail along the Golden Whip Stream where we can admire our first view of the famous karst pillars of Zhangjiajie

 

Lindsay refuses to even consider taking the glass elevator up the mountain! Nevermind the long line of annoying tourists, or the RMB 75pp cost – we visit parks to enjoy the nature! The walk up the mountain wasn’t easy, and takes us over an hour. Lindsay has to redistribute her backpack during the hike, and watches in amazment as a local vendor carries 4 boxes down the mountian on his shoulders!

 

When we finally reach the top, we find ourselves alone with a beautiful, unobstructed view of the “Stone Peak Forest”

 

Just the two of us and a couple dozen karst towers in the distance

 

Backpacker Igor takes in the stunning view of the Zhangjiajie landscape

We were now in a second section of the park – Tianzi Shan Scenic Area. Even though we knew we would run into crowds, we had climbed all the way up here so we figured we couldn’t climb back down again until we had visited the famous view points. We joined the herd and slowly shuffled forward, like cattle being driven to a slaughter…

 

We cross a narrow ravine, where we get a bird’s eye view of more majestic karst pillars

 

The bridge crossing the ravine is *packed* with selfie-snapping tourists

 

Don’t care how long my life would be, get me away from this crowded puddle!

 

It’s a short circuit to visit the most famous lookouts, but it’s slow going due to the number of people on the trail

 

The No. 1 Highest Natural Bridge connects two of the karst towers, 350m above the canyon floor

 

Taking a break from the masses to check out the view

 

Thousands of red prayer ribbons and “locks of love” cover every inch of the guardrails on the “Mountain of Lock”

 

We return to the canyon floor and hike 5KM along the Golden Whip Stream to the other end of the Zhangjiajie Sceneic Area

It was only 1PM by the time we reached the end of the trail – far too early to call it a day (especially since we were planning to take tomorrow off). We decided to forgo the cableway and climb yet *another* mountain – 2+ hours up over 3,000 stone steps to reach the Huangshi Village viewpoints, 1,000m in the air! The second ascent of the day was a true test of Lindsay’s stamina, but the views were totally worth it – the late afternoon light lit up the rocks with a gorgeous golden glow, and (best of all!) this part of the park wasn’t nearly as popular as the section near the elevator, so the trails were actually pleasant to walk on!

 

The hike up to Huangshi Village is longer and steeper than the first mountain, but has the added bonus of lookout points along the trail

 

We pass a large troop of macaques on our way up – luckily we ate all of our food already and they ignore us as we calmly walk by

 

Getting a close-up view of a neighboring karst tower

Zhangjiajie – the “Avatar Mountains” of China

 

Taking our time to explore the many pillars surrounding the Huangshi Village mountain

We are utterly exhausted after our two strenuous hikes, but we feel satisfied that we covered a lot of ground during Day 1 of our park visit, and feel guiltless about taking it easy on Saturday. By the time we reached the base of the mountain, it was already 4:45PM, so we knew making it back to the park entrance in time for our 5PM shuttle was a long shot. Once we reached the exit, however, we realized it was impossible – apparently the shuttle buses within the park do not connect to the separate entrances! When we showed the park staff a picture on our camera of the entrance we needed to get to, they told us the only way back was to exit the park and take a public bus for RMB 10pp.

We were a little annoyed by the hidden cost, but as there were plenty of shops outside this exit for us to do our grocery shopping, we decided to make the best of it. We picked up enough instant dinners and snacks to last us for two days before trying to hail a taxi directly to the hotel. Unfortunately, the only guy we could find was an unmarked taxi who insisted on charging us twice the fair price, so we ended up taking the public bus to the main park entrance so we could find a real taxi. By the time we got back to the hotel, we had been out for about 12hours – we had earned a rest!

Day 177: Travel Day to Zhangjiajie

We had a mid-day flight to Zhangjiajie, so we didn’t have any time for sight-seeing today. We had a lazy morning at the hotel (so sorry to leave – the convenience and comfort made us really miss city-living), and still had plenty of time to take the subway to the airport. After checking-in for our flight, we headed to the Executive Lounge which was a *vast* improvement on the bare room we had in Jiuzhaigou: a big lunch buffet, dozens of packaged snacks and even booze! Needless to say, we were in a great mood for our flight!

Now *this* is a proper Executive Lounge! We help ourselves to a BIG lunch at the buffet (including wine & beer!), and nick a handful of snacks for save for later

The Zhangjiajie Airport is 40+KM from the park entrance, and we were staying in a resort a good distance from the park, so we headed towards the line of taxis once we arrived and picked up our checked bag. Igor had to pull out his “no-nonsense” negotiating skillz when these wise-guys tried to overcharge us on the fare. We knew from online research and the Lonely Planet that a taxi from the airport to the park should only cost RMB 100, but it’s *always* smart to confirm the price before departing. “Duoshao?” (How much?) Igor asked. The guy typed, “500” into his phone. Igor didn’t even dignify that with a counter offer, simply scoffed an started walking away. After rejecting “400”, “300”, and “250” Igor finally got the driver to agree to 180. That’s my baby!

It was close to 5PM by the time we reached the hotel and check in, so we didn’t have time for much else besides exploring the resort grounds – which were AWESOME! We were 20min by car away from the park entrance, so we were far from the chaos of the village. The resort was calm and peaceful, and we appeared to be the only guests! (This had to be an allusion, surely everyone was simply still in the park?) We admired the outdoor pool, gym and restaurants, making plans to once again skip the park on one of the weekend days and hide out in the resort. The only drawback to being so far from town is that we were forced to eat dinner at the resort restaurant, as we discovered a taxi to the village would cost RMB 80 each way. The money we would save by eating ramen would not make up the RMB 160 taxi ride, so we decided to order the cheapest option on the menu (club sandwich and fries – actually pretty tasty) and made plans to stock up on food before leaving the park the next day.

 

The Harmona Resort is several miles away from the park entrance, which means we are protected from the noise and mayhem of Chinese mass tourism – safe in a quiet, tranquil cocoon

 

Where is everybody? We come down to dinner at the “western” restaurant to find it deserved at 7PM! Maybe everyone else is at the Chinese restaurant? Whatever – not going to complain!

Day 176: Wulong Karst National Geology Park

Our 2-day stop in Chongqing is really just a long layover, as Igor couldn’t find any direct flights from Jiuzhaigou to the next big park, Zhangjiajie. Since we had to stop here anyways, Igor did a little research to see if there was anything of interest that we could see in a day, and he discovered “The Three Bridges” – natural karst formations in a park that is supposedly “off the beaten path.” One blogger claimed it was the highlight of his China trip, due to the lack of tourists – sounds like a great recommendation to us!

While the Lonely Planet claims there is no public transportation to the park itself, Igor found a travel blogger who gave detailed directions on how to take the bus(es). Even though the trip was incredibly time-consuming, we had nothing else planned for the day so decided to leave the hotel at 7AM and let the transportation be part of our daily adventure.

Our adventure nearly got derailed when we arrived at the bus station and saw huge lines at the ticket counter – we had only given ourselves 10min wiggle room to buy our tickets and get to our gate. If we miss this bus, our plans for the day may be ruined! We watched in a panic as none of the agents seemed to be helping the people at the front of the line, when suddenly everyone turned away from the counters en mass and started hurrying toward the bus gates. We started following the crowd, and quickly asked a security office via Google Translate, “We need to go to Wulong. Should we go this way?” He nodded and pointed us to gate 7 where another large crowd was starting to gather – a few already had tickets (probably purchased the day before) but many others were like us. As we were waiting for the bus agents to sort everyone out, we managed to translate the Chinese characters on the electronic sign above the gate and confirmed that it did indeed say “Wulong 07:40,” so we knew we were in the right place. We asked another agent, “Can we buy tickets on the bus?” to which she nodded. Yay! Crisis averted! After a good 20min delay, the agents let us board the double decker bus (we get AWESOME seats on the second floor, right behind the exit stairwell so no one was in front of us) and we head out of town.

 

Taking the subway to the bus station. Lindsay is really disappointed that the weather is so hazy – she was really hoping for sunny pictures!

 

We don’t have bus tickets since the *entire terminal’s system is down* – all we can do is ask, “Wulong?” to the various people who work at the bus station. They point us to a gate – we assume this means we can just board and pay the conductor directly? Hope so…

We arrived in Wulong village around 10:00AM. According to the Lonely Planet, we have to hire a private taxi to get to the park, but we knew better – we walked up to the ticket counter and pulled up a picture of the Three Bridges and showed it to the agent. She nodded and sold us two tickets to the park. We purchased our return tickets to Chongqing as well, and confirmed the departure time at 6:40PM – a bit later than we were hoping, but we would still get back to the city at a decent hour. Despite the lack of English (or even pinyin!) signs indicating times and destinations, it was remarkably easy for us to find the minibus going to the park. We tried to board a full minibus that was just about to leave, but were waved off as there were no seats left. We would have sat on the floor, but were glad to discover that the minibus to the park doesn’t have a set departure time – apparently one minibus after another departs as soon as it is full of passengers. We climbed into the next minibus and only had to wait for about 15min before the driver decided he had enough customers to take off. Another 45min later and we recognized the pyramid-shaped tourist center of the Wulong County National Geology Park – we made it!

There are two more scenic areas of the park in addition to the Three Bridges, however each area has a separate admission fee. It was already close to noon at this point and we were not confident we could have visited more than one area and make it back to the station in time for our bus to Chongqing, so we went ahead with our original plan to visit just the Three Bridges and call it a day. There was no line at the ticket counter, so once we got our tickets, we joined a small que for the shuttle bus and headed off into the park.

 

Two subway lines, two buses and 4.5 hours later we have arrived at the Wulong Country National Geology Park. While the park runs shuttle buses to three scenic areas, we only have time to visit one, so we buy admission for the “Three Natural Bridges”

Up until this point, we believed we had truly stumbled upon a “well-kept secret” from Chinese mass tourism – sure we were in a bus full of Chinese tourists, but we figured we were getting to the park at the busiest part of the day. We soon discovered we were WRONG. When we got to the Three Bridges shuttle stop, we discovered huge tour groups queuing up to descend into the karst valley via the glass elevator. Since there was an extra RMB 75pp cost for the elevator (plus our sanity, for waiting in the line), we decided to take the footpath down instead, figuring we’d avoid the crowds as well. Once we reached the bottom, we officially called “bullshit” on the idea that this park is “off the beaten track” – yeah, maybe for Westerners it is (we were definitely the only white people), but the locals are very aware of the existence of Wulong park.

After a quick break to eat our lunch, we tried to make the best of it and explore the Three Bridges area. Since we had all afternoon, we tried to take our time, initially skipping the #1 Bridge near the elevator in order to walk down to the exit and back. However, we grossly misjudged the flow of traffic and found ourselves fighting a surge of tourists as we tried to return to the entrance of the trail. The experience just wasn’t fun anymore; so even though it was early, we joined the LONG line for the return shuttle to the tourist center and got the hell outta dodge.

 

As usual, we try to avoid the crowds by walking – we descend into the valley via footpath, rather than taking the glass elevator (or a sedan chair)

 

Apparently scenes from “Transformers: 4” were filmed in the park, so now the whole area has statues of autobots randomly placed throughout the park – even the village! As all the tourists swarm to the dinosaur for their selfies, we couldn’t help but imagine it coming to life and eating them all..

 

Bridge #2: Qinglong Bridge – in our hurry to move away from the crowds we totally forget to take a picture of Bridge #1…oops

 

Bridge #3: Heilong Bridge

 

For reasons unknown to us, all the Chinese tourists really like to yell in this park. I don’t mean they “talk loudly” (although they do that too), they scream, “ARGH!” as if they are trying to hear an echo. Except, there is no echo effect here, at least not one produced by nature – although, once one yokel starts screaming, several more inevitably reply

 

If you can manage to ignore the other people, the Wulong Geological Park is pretty spectacular – the deep karst valley looks prehistoric. A stone carving of a dragon adds a mystical touch to the scenery

 

Of course the exit of the scenic area forces us to walk through food stalls and souvenir stands – Igor stops to buy a $1 hotdog on a stick…ew! Is he really going to eat that?

 

Ah! Igor uses his hotdog to make friends with a scrappy dog loitering near the food stalls. He’s very shy and reminds us of Caesar. We start to feel a bit sorry for him, until we notice more tourists tossing him their leftover snacks – puppy cleans up!

 

Back at the main tourist center, Igor does his best “Chinese tourist” poses, but his “scarf” doesn’t billow in the wind very gracefully

 

Igor gives the stink-eye to a tourist who doesn’t seem to understand the concept of “giving someone else a turn” before finally getting his turn with Optimus Prime…or whoever this character is, I dunno, I didn’t watch the movie

 

Igor calls false advertising on the park promo photos that show only 4 people on the walks! Yeah, multiply that by 100, then it will be more accurate

Since we were heading back to Wulong city by 4PM, we were preparing ourselves for a long wait at the bus station for our return to Chongqing. It was luck that prompted us to “just double check” when a bus started boarding from our gate at 5PM – it was headed to Chongqing! We are quickly learning that Chinese buses don’t always follow their posted schedule – it seems that if there is ever a situation where they have a busload of people ready to go, they GO! It makes us wonder what would have happened if we had arrived later in time for our “6:40PM” bus – would it have left without us if it had enough passengers?

Even though Wulong Park was not the gem we were hoping for, we still felt pleased that our Chinese public-transportation travel adventure was a success, so we still considered it to be a good day. We were also really happy to get back to the city and our luxurious hotel room nice and early, so we decided to enjoy the rest of the evening by indulging in Western take-out, Chinese wine and English-language movies channels.

 

We indulge in another fast-food dinner, picking up some KFC on our way back from the subway station, and decide to spring for a bottle of *Chinese* wine! You know, considering it was only USD $4 for the bottle, it wasn’t bad! Maybe Chinese wine will be the next big thing…?

Day 175: Chongqing

Today was an easy travel day, as we had no activities planned for the afternoon. Lucky for us too, as our Air China flight was delayed by two hours. We were quite annoyed, as we had gotten up early in order to catch a 5:30AM cab from Jiuzhaigou to the airport (which was an hour and a half drive), and had already left the Executive Lounge by the time we realized the flight wasn’t on time (although, the lounge was pretty bare bones, so not a big loss). To console their airport-bound passengers, the Air China agents started handing out free water bottles and bowls of ramen (unfortunately, we were too slow on the uptake, and they ran out by the time we decided we wanted some free noodles).

Since we decided to take the subway into the city, it was after 2PM by the time we reached downtown Chongqing. We were starving (having missed our free ramen!) and not at all in the mood to look up recommended Chinese restaurants. We did the unthinkable – the most sacrilegious thing an adventurous “world-traveler” could do – WE ATE AT MCDONALDS. We tried to be ashamed of our blatant American boorishness, but we couldn’t – Lindsay hadn’t eaten a double-cheese burger in over 5 years, and that shit tasted GOOD.

 

The Executive Lounge at the Jiuzhaigou Airport was a total let-down – no food, just instant coffee and *warm* orange drink (we refuse to call that artificially sweet, from-concentrate concoction “juice”). When we leave to board our plane, we are once again disappointed to find our flight is delayed, and we have 2 hours to kill in the handful of terminal shops which – other than this *sweet* pair of panda-paw mittens – are full of weird Chinese food

 

Lindsay’s so tired from our early morning wake-up call!

 

Taking the Chongqing subway from the airport

 

We are starving by the time we drop off our bags at the hotel. We don’t want to look for something “authentic” – we want comfort food. McDonalds is engineered to taste good, and does it ever!

Once we had full bellies, we wandered aimlessly around the mall and the neighborhood around our hotel, getting our bearings so we would know where to catch our transportation the next day. We stocked up on a few snacks for our lunches, and headed back thought the alleyways.

 

Loving the variety of Chinese lucky cats available at the mall

 

We explore the alley next to our hotel and discover it is the “flower row” of downtown Chongqing. Dozens of floral shops next to each other – it looked and smelled beautiful! We were very tempted to buy some of the psychedelic sparkling blue roses…

 

While searching for a supermarket for dinner, we discover a huge produce marketplace! The building is bursting with a variety of local veggies

 

These are the biggest string beans I have ever seen! There are about a dozen varieties of white rice for sale – for the life of me I can’t tell the difference

Just as Igor and Lindsay were admiring the fresh produce and commenting how they would totally do their grocery shopping here if they had to live in China, they decided to explore the upper floor…the meat section. Well, we’ll admit the meat is probably very fresh…we could tell because some of the cuts still had fur and hair on them. When we hypothetically move to China, we’ll probably become vegetarians – Lindsay is not sure she could get used to non-refrigerated meat, no matter how “farm-to-table” it is.

 

The upstairs meat market where super-fresh animal parts are sold – even the tails and feet!

 

Walking back to the hotel, we pass even more produce vendors selling their groceries in the alley

 

Live pigeons, chickens, bunnies, ducks and geese…unfortunately we know this is *not* a pet store. Our bottom lips start to quiver as we pass the doomed caged animals, and our thoughts rush to our beloved chicken Marsala…hoping living a life of free-roaming bliss with her new family on Long Island…

 

OK, we would *definitely* be vegetarian if we lived here – especially after seeing a pile of bird feet and a bowl of blood next to a herd of live geese!

 

We also saw buckets of turtles and gold fish next to the live birds – we’re going to pretend these are destined for aquariums and backyard ponds (despite all evidence to the contrary)

 

Back to our high-rise hotel room at the Glenview – the view of the skyscrapers makes us nostalgic for Midtown Manhattan! The room deserves every one of its four stars, and we soak in the luxury of our fancy room and English-language movie channels

Days 171 – 174: Jiuzhaigou

We knew that Jiuzhaigou was going to be overcrowded from the get-go – it is, after all, China’s 2^nd most visited park (we’ll be going to the #1 park next week!). Igor had read horror-stories about hours-long waits at the ticket counter, so we decided to leave the hotel at 6:30AM so that we could reach the ticket office before it opened. We had arranged for a packed breakfast the night before, and hurried out the door before giving ourselves time to consider the weather. By the time we reached the park entrance (which was a good 30min walk – NOT the 1KM that the receptionist had told us!), we realized it was a mistake to start our day without our hats and jackets, so we were forced to split up. Igor waited in line for our tickets (which ended up being pretty short, even with Chinese tourists egregiously cutting), while Lindsay caught a cab back to the hotel to grab our warm clothes. We ended up entering the park just after 7AM, which ended up being a good thing as the hordes of tour groups had already departed.

Jiuzhaigou National Park is famous for its series of green and turquoise lakes, located in 2 Y-shaped valleys. According to Igor’s research, it is possible to walk the entire length of the park, and is advisable if you want to lose the crowds. We planned to take the shuttle bus all the way to the end of one the valleys (the Rize Valley, to the West was better recommended, as it had more “attractions”) and walk back to the beginning of the park; then take the shuttle to the second valley if we had time.

 

There is no line for the shuttle bus, so we hop right on and speed off toward the Rize Valley. While a Chinese guide talks nonstop in her mic, Lindsay notices the TV monitor is playing a video of the park highlights with English captions – she soon realizes that the video is perfectly timed to describe the attractions as we pass them – nice!

 

We mistakenly jump off the bus too early and start our day at Arrow Bamboo Lake. There are already massive groups of tourists, so we decided to forgo the southernmost part of the park and instead walk as quickly as we can back towards the park exit to try and get in front of the crowds. After about 20min of side-stepping all the selfie-snappers we succeed in losing the crowd at Panda Lake

 

By the time we reach the Multicolored Lake, we have the path practically to ourselves! We finally allow ourselves to slow down and take in the beauty of the park

 

Panda Falls and the Multicolored Lake, in Jiuzhaigou National Park

 

We find an empty bench and stop to eat the packed breakfast our hotel provided. The sausage seriously tasted like dog food, and the apple milk was disgustingly sweet – but hey! – free food is still free food.

 

When the sun comes up from behind the mountain, we are amazed by the stunningly bright emerald & turquoise colors of the water! The only other place we have seen water this colorful has been in New Zealand

 

A couple of boots at the Pearl Shoal – a huge, bubbling cascade at the center of the park.

 

The famed Nuorilang Waterfall – the biggest waterfall in the park

 

Crystal-clear and sparklingly blue, the Rhinoceros and Tiger Lakes are fabled to have healing powers. As we pass the Shuzheng Waterfalls, our path takes us out of the heat of the sun and into the woods

 

Walking though Jiuzhaigou in the late morning, it seems as though we have the park to ourselves!

 

We are pleased to find that we can find moments of calm, even a “mass tourism” attraction like Jiuzhaigou – you just have to get there really early, and walk really far to lose the crowds

 

“Jiuzhaigou” translates to “Nine Village Valley” in Tibetan – in the small Shuzheng Village, nine prayer-flag strewn stupas represent the original villages of the park’s namesake

 

We pass a series of small, bright blue lakes as we walk north towards the park exit

 

A skeletal dead tree in the water looks like coral in the freshwater lake

 

The day is getting pretty toasty as we keep walking – the lakes look so beautiful – we desperately want to jump in and swim!

 

Despite the “No Touching!” sign, Lindsay can’t help but run her fingers through the crystal-clear water

 

A jade path of water cuts through the yellowing grass of the Reed “Lake” swampland

 

As we pass our final lake, we see a small herd of horses chowing down on the abundant green grass

Reed Lake is the last lake heading back towards the exit of the park – after that it is about a 5KM hike through the woods along the stream. We considered walking back, but decided to hop on the bus so we could backtrack to the Zechawa Valley instead. We still hadn’t seen the Long Lake and the Colorful Pond – which is supposed to be the most spectacular lake in the park – and we didn’t want to risk missing them while we had a sunny day.

We stayed on the bus after it dropped off its passengers at the entrance, and rode back up to Nuorilang, where we had to transfer to a separate bus. This was when our visit to Jiuzhaigou reverted back to “mass tourism” mayhem. The park officials decided, in their infinite wisdom, to put the transfer bus on the other side of the park restaurant and souvenir shops, rather than right next to the main shuttle stop – thereby forcing tourists to meander through stalls of junk and hordes of other visitors. We were pretty rattled by the time we got on the bus, but we were able to get seats, so that seemed like a plus.

The drive up to the Long Lake was a long and twisty 18KM. Perhaps it was the stuffy heat of the bus, or the fact that the sun had finally disappeared behind the gathering clouds, but when we arrived at the Long Lake Lindsay was feeling ill, and neither she nor Igor had much patience for the hundreds of loud, pushy tourists that surrounded us. We quickly walked away from Long Lake without even stopping to take a picture, in our attempt to escape the claustrophobia-inducing crowds. We nearly passed on the Colorful Pond as well, but decided to wait it out, as the clouds seemed to be moving. We got our shot of the lake – no doubt it was stunning, but we are still on the fence as to whether the aggravation of Chinese mass tourism is worth the “pretty picture.”

 

The park forces us to walk though their restaurant and souvenir stalls in order to catch the transfer shuttle to the Zechawa Valley

 

WHERE’S WALDO? The Colorful Pond is breathtaking…but is it because of the natural beauty? Or the dozens of Chinese tourists, squeezing my ribcage?

 

A line of buses wait to return us to the park exit, which is now overrun with *thousands* of tourists

We looked at the forcast for the next three days – all projected rain. We decided to skip the weekend – we were just too exhausted to put ourselves through the gauntlet again, especially since the weather and resulting photos would be worse.

Saturday morning ended up being partly sunny, so we felt too guilty to stay in the hotel all day. Igor had read that there was a free hike outside the park, so we headed out in search of the trail. We followed the online instructions (from Wikitravel) and found a path that matched the description. However, it was a very poorly maintained trail, and after 20min of stepping over piles of horse poop, and getting scratched by overgrown bushes, we decided to abandon the hike – it wasn’t a particularly scenic area and we didn’t even know where the trail would lead. We returned to the hotel and spent a lazy afternoon writing hotel reviews online (Igor), reading trashy novels on the Kindle (Lindsay), and trying out new hairdos (Igor, again).

 

An optimistic start for our hike outside the park soons sours as the trail is steep and overgrown

 

Thumbs down for “free nature” in Jiuzhaigou – especially since there is trash everywhere, including the biggest pile of beer bottles we have ever seen

 

MAN BUN! Igor’s hair is getting sooo long, he can fit most of it in a ponytail! He’s threatening to keep it long for his first job interview when we get back…

Sunday is a complete wash, as it rains the entire day. We stay indoors, trying to be productive on our computers. We finally get cabin fever around dinner time, and brave the weather with the hotel’s umbrella in search of food. After walking back and forth along the river for half an hour, we finally find the White Star Café, a highly rated restaurant that has an English-language menu. Not the most spectacular dinner on our trip, but it was the highlight of our day just to get out of the hotel.

 

Dinner at the White Star Café

We had piss-poor weather on our final day in Jiuzhaigou, but we put on our ponchos and tramped out into the rain anyways. We got through the park gates just after opening, and rushed up to the “Primeval Forest” – the section of the park we had missed the first day. We soon discovered that our strategy of, “be the first ones in and walk down to the exit” didn’t really work as the park had closed the trail connecting the Primeval Forest to the Arrow Bamboo Lake! We weren’t sure if it was only closed today or if it had been closed our first day as well. In any case, we were forced to get back on the shuttle bus and resume our hike at the same spot where we had started on Friday. At this point, we had lost the edge the early morning would have given us, plus the crowds of tourists were even slower and more difficult to pass today due to the copious amounts of umbrellas. Even when the rain had stopped, the Chinese kept their umbrellas open creating a “great wall” of multicolored cloth and wire that we couldn’t penetrate!

We would have dearly loved to push past everyone, but we know that shoving on the narrow wooden platforms was not only rude, but dangerous, so we grudgingly trudged along with the group. However, Igor *lost his shit* when a Chinese guy behind us gleefully started physically parting a way for himself by sticking his arms between the two people ahead of him and forcing his way quickly though. Igor turned around and grabbed the guy by the shirt and starting yelling, “No! No! NO!” The guy’s immediately started cowering in fear and held up his open hands as if to say, “sorry!” Needless to say, there was no more pushing.

It took us hours to finally lose the crowds, by which time Lindsay had had it with the poor weather and rude tourists. She returned to the hotel while Igor finished his 20KM hike solo. We concluded that four days was WAY too long to spend in Jiuzhaigou – we can’t wait to move on to our next destination.

 

We had high hopes that the park would be less crowded at 6AM on a rainy Monday morning – our hopes were soon smashed to pieces as we tried to defend our eyeballs from the dozens of umbrella points sticking into our faces on the overpopulated trail

 

We make sure to take to shuttle *all the way* to the southern end of the park this time, so that we can visit the Primeval Forest – the only section of the Rize Valley we missed the first day

 

Misty rain clouds create a beautiful foggy effect on the forest mountains in Jiuzhaigou

 

Foggy clouds hide the mountains and misty dew covers the “old man’s beard”

 

We have less luck dodging the crowds this time, especially since the park has closed several trails (perhaps due to the poor weather?) and we are forced to take the shuttle bus instead of walking

 

The Chinese tourists go nuts snapping pictures when they see a pair of ducks – we find this so silly

 

We find a quiet spot near the closed section of the trail to have our packed breakfast

A cloudy, rainy day in Jiuzhaigou National Park

 

We have to walk with the crowds for a good 2hrs today before we finally find some solitude. When we reach the lakes north of Shuzheng Village, we slow our pace to admire the waters – still bright blue even with the cloudy weather. Nonetheless, Lindsay is so exhausted by the time we reach the Reed Lake, she desperately wants to back to the hotel, so she and Igor split up so he can finish his goal of walking to the park entrance.

 

The lake-less path between Reed Lake and the park exit is definitely the road less travelled – Igor passed only 1 person during his 2hr hike

 

Tibetan prayer flags and prayer wheels at the Zharu Temple

 

The Zharu Temple – a Tibetan temple just inside the entrance to the park. The shuttle bus doesn’t stop here – the only way to visit is by walking

 

Walking back to the hotel along the river, Igor sees the gorgeous blue water from the park converge with the dirty brown run-off from the village. So goes any sense of serenity as he too is washed up in a flow of tourists, squeezing through the stuffy, smelly souvenir stalls that surround the exit. Seriously – not sure what animal all the jerky was from, but it smelled awful.

Day 170: Langmusi – Day 3

Before going to sleep the night before, Lindsay made Igor switch spots with her, as sleeping as the far end of the tent left her exposed to occasional raindrops. As a result, Lindsay slept *wonderfully* that night! Poor Igor, however, found the edge of the tent to be too cold, and had a second night of poor sleep. Regardless, when we saw our hostess get up at dawn to milk the yaks, we crawled after her to help shovel yak dung. Igor seemed to be making really good progress, finishing half of the yard during the hour that Lagay was milking. (Lindsay decided she was better taking a management position rather than taking the poop hands on) However, we were speechless when Lagay took the shovel back after finishing her final yak and rapidly cleaned the rest of the yard in under 5 minutes!

Since we had to catch a bus to Jiuzhaigou that afternoon, we had to cut our tour a bit short. The normal itinerary would have us return to Langmusi via the Jikehe Village, where we were supposed to stop for lunch. Instead, Tchacy led the horses directly to the highway, where we had to dismount and walk along the road for a good 15min before our pre-arranged taxi met up with us. It’s a shame, because up until we hit the highway, our final ride was fun and peaceful – the sun had come back out and we passed many other nomads who were busy cutting grass for their winter stock of hay. Walking the horses along the road was unnerving – there was barely any shoulder and we had to cross a one lane construction zone, all the while normal traffic (including semi-trucks!) was zipping by. We were relieved when our taxi arrived, although we felt bad that we had to bade a hurried farewell to Tchacy and his horses on the side of the road.

 

Rain, shine or foggy mist – Lagay is up with the dawn everyday to milk the yaks

 

Igor has real talent for shovelling shit

 

Igor took another try with the “pe” – while he doesn’t get the slingshot as far or as fast as Lagay yet, he succeeds in making (most) of the rocks fly in the right direction!

 

After finishing chores, we return to the tent where Lagay laddels up some egg & veggie soup for breakfast

 

Poor Tyet! The dog keeps sticking his head into the tent to see if anyone will come give him affection!

 

The sun finally starts to break through the clouds during our ride back across the plains to Langmusi

We returned to the Black Tent café where we collected our bags from the tour company’s locked shed, and settled into a booth by the window. After three days with nothing but the wild outdoors to use as a bathroom, even the squat toilet at the restaurant was a welcome luxury!

Since we were missing out on our final lunch in the traditional village, Liyi included a Chinese meal at the café for us, which was really nice. We had about an hour to kill before we had to catch our bus, so we had a chance to catch up on a few emails and repack our bags. A little after 3PM, we hailed a taxi (ended up being the same guy who picked us up on the highway – he must have been waiting outside for us) and showed him the Chinese directions Liyi had written on the back of our bus ticket.

 

Final lunch at the Black Tent Café before catching our bus to Jiuzhaigou. The bus doesn’t actually stop in town, but drives by the crossroad into Langmusi. Liyi had called the bus company the day before to buy our tickets and confirm that the bus driver knew to pull over on the side of the road to pick us up. We had our doubts, standing in the middle of nowhere with huge semi-trucks blaring their horns at us, but sure enough, a bus pulled over at 3:15PM and picked us up!

The bus ride took about 4 hours to reach the Jiuzhaigou area, where traffic started to pile up on the dozen or so hairpin turns down the mountainside. It took us over an hour to reach the bus station at the other side of the village, which looked more garishly lit, overdeveloped Las Vegas than a national park! As we slowly passed through the neon lights, our hearts sank as we realized we had finally encountered the real Chinese “mass tourism.”

After our bus finally let us off, we caught a taxi to our hotel for the next 5 nights: The Qianhe International Hotel. When Igor was originally booked our hotels (back in February! Everything had to be finalized before we even applied for our travel visa!), for some reason the Qianhe didn’t have availability the full 5 days, so we had a different hotel on our itinerary for the first night. We didn’t want to waste a day switching hotels, so we checked to see if the Qianhe had opened up – we were in luck! The price was several times the rate we had secured in February, but we decided the convenience was worth the last-minute price hike. While everything eventually worked out alright, the reception staff at the Qianhe were completely thrown for a loop when we tried to explain that we had 2 back-to-back reservations. Long story short: we were asked to check in twice, once today and again tomorrow morning – but we could keep our luggage in the room when we went to the park.

By the time we reached our room, we were utterly exhausted. We took showers and washed 3 days’ worth of yak dung off our clothes, before crashing.

Day 169: Langmusi – Day 2

The bad weather lasted all night, and we woke up to a cloudy, mist morning. While Umatashi and Tchacy slept in until breakfast, we crawled out of the covers to help Lagay as soon as we noticed her heading out of the tent for her morning chores. One pair at a time, she released a calf who immediately ran to its mother to start suckling milk. She let the calf go at it for about 20sec, before pulling it away and tying it to a stake on the ground – this is how she gets the mother yak’s milk flowing so she can milk her. After she has finished getting the human’s share, she released the calf to finish its breakfast. She repeated this process over the next hour, milking about 25 yaks. We motioned to Lagay, asking if we can try it out, and she happily nods and shows us how to yank the yak’s teat to release the milk. We only managed to get a weak stream of milk to come out – we didn’t want to hold up Lagay’s morning with our slowness, so once we quickly move on to let her finish. Instead, we help out with the only task we can’t possibly screw up: shoveling shit.

Yak dung is the nomad’s main source of fuel for heat and cooking. Every day, Lagay shovels the shit from the yak’s nighttime pen and scatters it flat on the hillside – it takes 4 days for the dung to dry (provided it doesn’t rain). We asked our hosts how long the giant pile in the tent would last – they told us it was enough dung for 5 days. By the time Lagay was ready to start breakfast, our shoes were caked with poo and we had smears on the bottoms of our pants and our hands. We used up about half of our hand-sani trying to get our hands clean enough to eat.

 

Our hostess, Lagay, is up with the dawn to milk the yaks

 

Igor and Lindsay take turns shovelling yak shit. Yup, we *paid* to do this!

 

Lindsay and Igor take turns milking a yak – we both manage to get a small stream of milk going, but quickly let Lagay finish as she is much faster and we don’t want to hold up her other chores for the day

Ater breakfast, Tchacy got a call from Liyi regarding our itinerary for the day – he passed us the phone, “You are supposed to climb the mountain today, but it is covered in fog. Your guide can take you to the gorge instead – there is no fog there.” We had no preference for our destination for the day – just as long as we got to go out on horseback, so we told Liyi the gorge would be fine. Once Lagay had packed up our lunch, we helped Tchacy saddle the horses. It was still lightly raining, so he gave us some ponchos to keep us dry during our ride.

As we were preparing to set off, our hosts’ dog, Tyet, quietly walked over to Igor and started sniffing his pants. Apparently he no longer considered us dangerous intruders, now that we spent the night and helped his mistress shovel poo. Igor waited patiently for Tyet to get comfortable before trying to pet him. Once Tyet licked Igor ‘s hand we knew we had the all clear, and we started showering the dog with affection. When we took off for the gorge, Tyet decided he wanted to join the party, and followed us for the rest of the day.

 

Riding off in the rain, wearing thick waterproof ponchos. With the dramatic mountain scenery we feel like character from “The Lord of the Rings” – Aragorn and his wandering Rangers!

At the mouth of the gorge, Tchacy dismounted and invited us to climb up the hillsides to check out the view (I guess he really wanted to make sure we got to hike!). We could see tons of streamers of prayer flags flapping at the top of the hill, adorning some kind of stumpa, so we climbed up to check it out. Once we were finished, we joing Tchacy (and Tyet!) for a picnic lunch of fried potatos and bread.

 

Hiking to the top of the hill at the mouth of the gorge, where thousands of prayer flags flap in the wind

Prayer flags on the hill above the valley

 

Igor takes a break with Lindsay, before climbing to the peak of the next hill

View of the valley

 

Pretty flowers and a flowing stream back in the gorge

 

Igor cements his friendship with Tyet by feeding him our leftover lunch

 

Riding back through the gorge

 

The rain has stopped for our return ride, allow us to ditch the ponchos

 

A tired dog is a good dog! Igor does everything in his power to wear out Tyet to prevent him from barking all night

Once we returned to the tent in the afternoon, we had a lot of down time. We went outside to play with Tyet when we got a bit of sun, otherwise we hung out inside and drank lots of hot tea. That night, we “helped” Lagay herd the yaks again, then entertained Tchacy and our hosts with Igor’s “magic trick”. After dinner, Tchacy started a game of “Pairs”, which was easy enough to figure out the rules without speaking the same language. By the time we rolled out the sleeping bags again, we were so tired, we stode a good chance of actually sleeping!

 

When we see a beam of light peak through the tent, we rush outside to enjoy the sunshine. It’s brief, but we get a few shots as we play with Tyet

 

While Umatashi gets home before sunset, he doesn’t even help Lagay herd the yaks today! We join Lagay and she attempts to teach us how to use the “pe” (a Tibetan slingshot) to spook the yaks into running in the right direction. After Lindsay nearly throws a rock at her head, she wiesly gives up. We’ll stick to shovelling poop.

 

Yak meat, vegetables and rice for dinner – YUM! Afterwards, Igor shofs off his Indonesian “Jungle Magic” trick and Tchacy teaches everyone to play “Pairs”

Day 168: Langmusi – Day 1

We tie-toed out of the hotel just after dawn, and walk down to the main street to catch a taxi to the bus station. The bus to Langmusi was the first of the day, and was already boarding when we arrived 15min before departure. After an easy 3.5 ride, we disembark at our final destination just before

Igor had arranged a 3-day horse trekking tour, with a 2-night homestay with a Tibetan nomad family through Langmusi Tibetan Horse Trekking. We met with Liyi, our English-speaking contact, at the tour company’s restaurant, the Black Tent Café. We had a good 2hrs to review the itinerary with her, finalize payment, repack and store our bags, and even grab some lunch before meeting our guide, Tchacy, at 1:30PM. We followed Tchacy to the other end of town where his horses were waiting. As he was loading our saddlebags, a German couple walked by and greeted us – apparently they had just returned from the same tour the day before. We asked them how they liked it, and they were very positive, ensuring us we would have a fantastic time, “As long as the weather stays nice.” They did warn us that they were exhausted afterwards, and spent the whole day in their hotel room after they got back. Since we knew there are no beds in the nomad’s tents and we would be sleeping on the ground, we prepared ourselves for a poor 2-nights sleep.

Heading down the empty streets of Xiahe early in the morning to catch our bus to Langmusi

We can’t afford to get sick, so when people coughing on the bus, we bust out our new face masks

We arrive in Langmusi in time for lunch. Our tour company owns the Black Tent Café, right across the street from the bus stop, so we grab some eggs sandwiches while we review the tour itinerary

The horses can’t carry a lot of weight, so we pack a few essentials into a saddlebag and lock our big bags in the tour company’s storage room (kinda sketchy location, behind the building in an auto shop – but whatever)

We have a short walk to the other end of town where our horses await

Lindsay is saddled up and ready to ride!

Igor’s horse munches on some grass as we prepare to head out – as we soon discover, all our horses are little fatties who would far rather stop and eat than carry us along the mountain trails

The horseback ride to the nomad’s tent was wonderful – just the three of us, meandering through the grassy mountains. We weren’t even following a trail half the time – our guide and his horses just seemed to know the way. We were miles from the nearest village and out of earshot of the road, so the ride was extremely peaceful – the only sound besides nature was our guide, who liked to sing Tibetan chants to himself. We observed over the next few days that we must be a devout Buddhist, as he constantly sang chants, and seemed to pray each morning.

Heading into the beautiful alpine grasslands outside Langmusi

We have a long ride to the White Dragon River that afternoon

Every now and then, Lindsay has a battle of wills with her horse, urging him to keep walking when he’d rather be eating grass

Rolling green hills, as far as the eye can see

Hundreds of sheep dot the grassland, but none of them belong to the family we are staying with

When we arrived at the nomad’s tent, no one was home. After unsaddling the horses, our guide motioned for us to enter the tent anyways (which upset their guard dog who barked his head off at us for the rest of the day). Clouds had rolled in during the afternoon and we were starting to get chilly, so we were happy to get out of the wind, especially when Tchacy started a fire in the stove. We noticed a pile of dirt in the corner of the tent, which Tchacy used as fuel to light the fire – on further inspection we realized this was a huge mound of dried yak poop! Surprisingly, it didn’t smell at all, even when it was burning. Hey! Waste not, want not.

Our hosts finally turned up about half an hour later. Even though there was a huge language barrier between us (our hosts only spoke Tibetan, and Tchacy only spoke Tibetan and Chinese), it was surprisingly comfortable. We learned quickly to ask only simple questions that required either “Yes & No” or number answers to Tchacy in Chinese using our offline Google Translate App – Tchacy would then translate to our hosts. Any questions that didn’t make it through the language barrier were easily laughed off on both sides as unimportant.

After a few hours of riding, we finally reach a hilltop near the White Dragon River where a black, yak-hair tent sit

Our host lights the stove, burning their traditional fuel – dried yak dung!

An afternoon snack of sugared yak yogurt! Later that evening, Lindsay helps crank the machine which separates the yak butter from the milk

Once our hosts started their evening chores, we got up to see if we could help. We joined the husband, Umatashi, round up the yaks from the hillside (we didn’t have to go far – it seems the yaks are conditioned to return to the tent every night), although our tour company advised us not to try and tie up the yaks ourselves, as they can be very skittish and hurt strangers. Once all the female yaks and their babies were tied down (for some reason the one male yak they owned remained untied – I guess he protects the herd at night?), Lindsay took the opportunity to ask where she should go to use the toilet. Our hostess, Lagay, smiled and waved her hand AROUND THE WHOLE HILL. Anywhere. Got it. Lindsay didn’t see any toilet paper littering the ground, so she deducted that had to be thrown in the trash bag inside the tent. NOTE: if hygiene is super important to you, we wouldn’t recommend this tour.

We never saw our hostess wash her hands before cooking, although she did insist that Lindsay rinse her hands before helping to make noodles later that night, so we assumed she must be cleaning her own hands as well when we weren’t watching. In any case, we never got food poisoning during nor immediately after the tour, so either everything was a lot cleaner than we thought, or yak dung doesn’t have that much bacteria.

Around sunset, our host beckons us to join him outside and help round up the yak herd for the night. Since no one speaks English, we’re not exactly sure how we can help – we figure walking behind him is good enough, as that seems to herd the yaks in the right general direction

The woman seriously does all the work around here – while the husband walks around “herding” the yaks, his wife runs around and single-handedly ties all 50+ yaks to the ropes stakes at the top of the hill outside the tent

Once the yaks are put away, our hostess, Lagay, prepares meat and potatoes for a stew dinner

Lagay invites Lindsay to help stretch dough into handmade noodles – after a few minutes of ripping and butchering the dough, Lindsay hands the mess back so our hostess could fix it.

Dinner was pretty late, around 9PM. After about an hour, our hosts made hand gestured for, “do you want to go to sleep?” As they prepared the sleeping mats and got out our sleeping bags, Lindsay and Igor headed outside to use the “toilet” one last time, hoping to prevent the need to climb over everyone in the middle of the night. As Lindsay squatted down to do her business, she started to freak out when she realized the male yak was following her! She begged Igor to stand in between the while she peed – as soon as she was done she ran back to the tent. Lindsay was disgusted when she saw the male yak walk over to her pee and started licking it up – GROSS. Igor was amused, “Hey! That’s what the lion in heat did in Africa too!”

We returned to the tent and crawled into our sleeping bags at the far end of the tent. “Thanks, Mommy!” we chimed as Lagay *literally* tucked us in. I wish I could say we slept well, but the first night was a bit of a nightmare, at least for Lindsay. A few minutes after turning out the light, it started to rain. The yak-hair tent is not waterproof, although there is a plastic lining protecting the half with the sleeping mats. Unfortunately, as Lindsay was all the way at the end of the tent, raindrops kept spraying her face throughout the night. And while Lindsay had taken to wearing earplugs to bed, Igor was constantly woken up by the barking dog.

Day 167: Travel Day to Xiahe

We had a lot of ground to cover in the next few days – thankfully Igor scheduled an overnight pit-stop in Xiahe so we could sleep in a real bed, rather than suffering an overnight bus. We started our journey with a very comfortable, 4.5hr train ride to Lanzhou (first class!). We hopped off the train at the end of the line and started negotiating with taxi drivers at the station. The first bus to Xiahe would get us there after 5PM, and we were willing to pay a little more for a taxi if it bought us more time to explore the town. When we researched fair prices online, we decided RMB 500 would be our max price. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get anyone lower than RMB 700, so we decided to go with the bus route after all.

We grabbed a taxi to the South Bus Station, which was a good 45min by car (more with bad traffic) – according to Lonely Planet the fare should have been RMB 35, but our driver price gouged us a bit by charging RMB 50. After wasting 15min trying to hail a taxi on the side of the street, we caved and paid the “tourist fee” to make sure we didn’t miss our bus. We were a bit nervous as the tickets for the Xiahe bus can only be purchased in person so there was no way to pre-book the seats, but luckily there were plenty of spots left on the 2PM bus.

 

At the Zhangye Train Station, bright & early, ready for our high-speed ticket outta here!

 

Our first leg of the journey is a 4.5hr high-speed train ride from Zhangye to Lanzhou. All the sleeper seats were sold out by the time we bought our tickets in Beijing, so we had to “settle” for First Class

 

The scenery outside the window was spectacular, as we climbed over snowcapped mountains and whizzed by towering pagodas

 

Our second leg of the journey is a 3.5hr bus ride from Lanzhou to Xiahe

As soon as we arrived in Xiahe, we went back into the ticket office to pre-book our bus tickets to Langmusi for 7:40AM the next morning. Then we grabbed an RMB 4 taxi to our hotel, the Nirvana Restaurant & Hotel, right across the street from the city’s main attraction – the Labrang Monastery. We were a bit worried that we had once again been hoodwinked by false advertising when the assistant at the counter didn’t speak a word of English as we tried to check-in, but luckily the Tibetan owner and his Dutch wife were just really busy and came to greet us later that evening.

As we expected, we arrived too late to take a guided tour within the Labrang Monastery, but we were pleased to find out the 3KM “kora” (pilgrim path) is open 24hr free of charge. We walked over to the monastery grounds and took our time walking (clockwise) around the complex, spinning the endless rows of prayer wheels along the way.

We returned to the hotel just before dark for a hot shower and a delicious Tibetan dinner at the downstairs restaurant. Our hosts were disappointed to hear that we were only passing through, and told us how we could unlock the front door to let ourselves out the next morning. In hindsight, we realized we would have liked to spend another day in this cute mountain village, but we were happy that we at least got to visit for an evening.

 

Colorful prayer wheels surrounding the Labrang Monastery

 

We make way for determined pilgrims who power through the 3KM of endless prayer wheels at a breakneck pace. Igor takes a hand spinning one of the big wheels with a grin

 

Looks like renovations are underway, as new gateways and prayer wheels are under construction

 

Wandering through the monastery courtyards and pathways, we see a lone monk walking ahead of us

 

We hike to the top of the hill for a view of the huge Labrang Monastery complex

 

Loving our cozy, Tibetan-style boutique hotel

 

Savoring some spicy Tibetan fare at the Nirvana Restaurant & Hotel

Day 166: Zhangye – Day 3

Our taxi driver picked us up from the hotel at 7:30AM, and we were off to Pingshanhu Canyon (AKA Flat Lake Canyon), which is located 56KM outside of Zhangye city. This attraction was not even on Igor’s radar when planning the trip, and we had difficulty finding any English information online. The only reason we decided to visit is because it was included in our taxi driver’s guide book, and the description calling it, “China’s version of the Colorado Grand Canyon” sounded very promising.

While the map in the guide book indicated that the canyon should be a mere 45min away, we discovered that the main road to the area is under heavy construction (based on the amount of construction vehicles, worker’s tents and promotional billboards, it looks like they are building a new highway), so it took us a good hour and a half to reach the entrance. We were excited when we saw the empty parking lot and realized we were the first tourists to arrive – we quickly bought our tickets and hopped onto the shuttle bus, only to discover that the shuttle wouldn’t run until after 9AM, by which time 2 Chinese tour groups arrived. Boo.

Nevertheless, this canyon is way off the beaten path, even for local tourists, so the place is not crowded at all. Judging by the map printed on the back of our tickets, the park looks massive and could easily take up a full day or more to explore. Since we only had a half day, we just spent the morning walking around the rim of the canyon and descending to the canyon floor for an easy hour hike before heading back to the entrance. We didn’t find it as mind-blowingly beautiful as the Danxia Rainbow Rocks (photos on the Chinese tourism website look heavily Photoshopped), but any day enjoying nature is a good day.

 

We are literally the *first* car in the parkinglot at the Pingshanhu Canyon entrance. Unfortunately for us, our head start counts for nothing as we have to wait 20min for the first shuttle bus to fill up before the driver will let us enter the park

 

Checking out the views from the canyon rim

Pingshanhu Canyon, outside Zhangye

 

A helpful sign suggests the “best spot” for photographs

 

A helicopter flys by, giving us perspective on the size of the rock formations – since the park is still very underdeveloped, we know it’s not a sight-seeing tour

 

Kissy kissy at Pingshanhu Canyon!

 

As we walk along the rim of the canyon, we run into a herd of mountain sheep! Check out the horns on that guy!

 

After an easy 1KM walk from the shuttle stop, we turn off to take the steep stairway down to the canyon floor

 

Piling rocks at the bottom of Pingshanhu Canyon

 

While this *is* a legit canyon, as you can see, comparsions to the Grand Canyon are absolutely absurd.

 

Prayer flags adorn the “Lucky Elm” on the canyon floor, and a sign implores us to remember the tender feelings of the grass and flowers.

 

The path through the canyon only takes about an hour. When we reach the stairs at the end, we ascend and make our way back to the shuttle stop

 

Our timing is off and we reach the shuttle stop right aroud lunchtime. There is a lull in the frequency of shuttles, and we end up waiting about 40min. When the first one comes by, we force our way on even though it is completely full. The Chinese tourists seem a bit annoyed with us, which only makes us smile

When we finally returned to the canyon entrance, we were amused to find our taxi driver engrossed in a game of cards with a group of other drivers. We cheered him on when he pocketed his earnings. Once again, he asked us if he could pick up an additional fare, but we turned him down since the only group heading our way was a threesome who would not even fit with us in the sedan. Luckily, he is a good-natured guy and we headed out in our private car in high spirits.

Since the Mati Si temples are in the opposite direction as the canyon, we had to pass through Zhangye on the way to our next destination. Our taxi driver stopped for quick 20min lunch break, and invited us to join him. We had to decline the nice gesture though, as our poor tummies couldn’t handle any more exotic foods, and stuck to the safty of our fruits and nuts. It was another 65KM to the temples, so it was late afternoon by the time we reached the ticket office. However, we had to agree with our taxi driver – the Mati Si area was stunning and we were really happy we decided to fit it in. While the Mogao Grottos certainly had more intricate, high-quality carvings and cave paintings, everything was closed off behind locked doors and plexiglass barriers. The Mati Si temples, on the other hand, were open for self exploration, and we felt like little kids, climbing through the narrow passagways and poking our heads out the cliff side balcony windows.

 

We have a good 2 hour drive between the Pingshanhu Canyon and the Mati Si temples, so it’s already pretty late in the day by the time we reach the ticket counter

 

Igor and our taxi driver pose outside the entrance gate to the Mati Si Scenic Area

 

We end up with admission tickets to 3 attractions within the Mati Si area…we are not entirely sure which attractions are which, so we just rely on our taxi driver to guide us to the correct locations

 

Our first stop is the main temple, the Mati Si AKA “Horse Hoof” Monastery

 

Dozens of “temple grottos” are carved into the sheer cliffside, with colorful balconies jutting out from precarious heights

 

To access the grottos, we climb through a labyrinth of dark and narrow passages

 

The steep and uneven stairwells are dizzying, but totally worth it for the thrilling views

 

At the ground level of the main temple caves, there is a deep grotto with a tall golden buddha

 

Walking behind the golden Buddha, there are dozens of alcoves carved into the walls of the hallway. For some reason, all of the figures on the outer wall have been destroyed (possibly vandalism during the Cultural Revolution?), while the figures on the inner walls have been restored. A Chinese tour guide probably could have complained this, but we had neither the time nor the language skills to find out

 

The weathered – but still beautifully vibrant! – gate to the empty Temple of Buddhahood Victory

 

Dusty prayer wheels and a bright and colorful mural within the deserted temple

  

The Palace of King Gesar – a horse-loving Tibetan king who “united” (conquered) the area in the 10^th century

 

Snowcapped mountains and ominous clouds create a gorgeous backdrop to the Mati Si Scenic Area

 

Another gorgeous gate and cliff side balconies in the Thousand Buddhas Caves

The Thousand Buddhas Cave temple complex

 

Dozens of red wooden prayer tablets are tied to a stone pagoda within the temple courtyard. Climbing up into the grottos, we see more awesome frescos decorating the doorways to the meditation rooms

We head back to Zhangye at sunset, and bid farewell to our fantastic taxi driver when he drops off at our hotel. Thankfully, we get back at a decent hour, and have enough time to search out a real grocery store a few blocks away from the hotel. We stock up on snacks for our train ride the next day, and pick up some fancy ramen and frozen veggies for dinner.

 

Finally! A REAL grocery store! We stock up on raman, cookies, snacks and eggs (it took us a while to choose between the many color options!). Unfortunately, at RMB 150, we decide to pass on the Casillero del Diablo