The avatar mountains!

This was my last full day in this part of the trip before I flew off to Xiamen and I still I hadn't made it to the most famous attraction around here, the famous ZhangJiaJie mountains, the place they filmed Avatar (kind of, they took some pictures here and rendered Avatar a bit like them).

I was up and out for half 8 and met a friend I made last night before jumping together into a taxi to the bus station, in the taxi the driver found out I was going to Changsha to catch my plane the next day and recommended instead that I save some money and take a bus company he knew instead of the official one, I consented and we dropped past on the way to get their card and check the bus times, half past 8 tomorrow, from the same place, no problem! Back in the car the driver mentioned he could just take me straight to the mountain for 50rmb, £5 to go straight there instead of the hassle of waiting for a slow bus, it seemed worth it to save time so O.K., onwards!!

40 minutes or so later we arrived.... at a tiny row of shows and several large hotels in the shadow of the mountains but still they were out of reach, the driver dropped me at a tour company entrance and left me there to fend for myself, walking in I found the tour guide manager and got talking about a trip, and then the problems started.

First he considered it impossible to see the mountains in a single day, especially since it was already 10am and I was only just making enquiries, gesturing to a huge map he pointed with a stick to all the places I 'must see' and explained how over the next two days he would show me them all on his lovely air conditioned bus. Eventually I convinced him I already had a flight and only had today and he conceded to a cut down tour, only the top sights and I would miss some of the famous mountains with names I apparently should have heard of, and famous viewing platforms with poetic Chinese names that simple don't translate...

After 20 minutes came the crunch, the price, he started at 950rmb per person (£95) for the one day tour, per person! so nearly £200 for us both. This was a huge surprise for me as I had expected a pretty cheap day seeing a mountain and only paying for a few bus tickets! he obviously saw the look of disbelief on my face and so the bargaining began, eventually he offered 700rmb each for the tour, still a hell of a lot of money! 

I decided bugger it I would just walk and see the damn things myself and if I missed the sights I would use the £70 to buy something nice to console myself, along with some nice postcards! As my friend and I walked away he tried to entice us by pointing out the complimentary seafood lunch, which for my was the final dealbreaker as I don't eat fish unless I can help it!

Since we still hadn't eaten breakfast we went to a nearby restaurant which being so early was empty except for the staff eating their noodles from a huge vat outside, they offered us the menu but we settled on what they were having, a cheap bowl of noodles with some spice and a tiny piece of meat, cheap and filling. As we were eating my friend started chatting to the waiter, and then another older man turned up and they both sat down, this was way beyond my chinese so I sat there and concentrated on my noodles, too much Chinese first thing in the morning is tough going and so I just waited, eventually my friend explained the plan. it turned out the waitress had said that the tour was overpriced and as we were two we could just get a local guide instead and do it ourselves. The man was the guide and he wanted 100rmb for a days guiding, in Chinese only, fair enough, the park also had a one day entry fee of 250rmb per person, so that was a total of 600rmb, plus 50rmb for a taxi to the park entrance to save us a three hour walk... In all for both of us we decided to go for it and our new friend called a taxi and after stopping for some cash, we were off!

We arrived half an hour later at the entrance to the park, a big building and a road block which is supposedly at every entry and exit to the entire mountain range! The guide was very friendly and tried to help us in any way he could, he even said in the past they would use their relatives entry card to sneak guests in for free, but now they have finger print scanners for ever guest, linked to your entry ticket so only you can use it, which also stops resale, madness!

We arrived at the park gate and this big building with 15 or so pedestrian entry gates a big ticket office/toilet complex was completely deserted except for the 10 or so staff hanging around in various uniforms. We went to the ticket office and bought our entry tickets, 250rmb each for day, and then waited whilst the same man came out of the booth and processed us through the gate into the park proper, including fingerprinting us both and linking the card to our print, crazy! 

Once in the man left after waving towards an empty bus stop and so we waited there for the internal shuttle bus system to come and collect us. Now I see what they have done, closed the entrances and exits and made a free to ride shuttle bus system all around the huge mountain range area so that upfront payment let us see the mountains and ride the buses, but all the extra attractions all had extra fees! 

20 minutes later the bus arrived, completely empty, and drove us to our first stop. Having the guide was invaluable, he knew we had only one day and had a perfect plan of the map in his head, he knew which bus to take, from where, where to get off and where to ask to be let off, and which queues to jump and where to go. 

Soon we had skipped a few of the more uninteresting mountains with a promise we would see plenty more and arrived at one of the main attractions, the great glass elevator.

Apparently not quite the longest, or tallest, or biggest elevator in the world but this huge outside lift from the ground way up to the top of a square cliff was still mighty impressive, and also they say has the title for the worlds heaviest! 

After buying out entry ticket (£2 each) we headed into the elevator, skipping the wrong way down queue lines and avoiding the metal detectors at our guides expert direction. Soon we had boarded the lift with unfortunately dirty windows and after a short wait were fired skywards to our first real glimpse of the mountains.

As soon as I exited the lift out guide motioned us out, down, round, down a  tiny path to the first viewing platform, he waited while we look, admired, took lots of pictures, and then helped me take a picture of myself there. His method of photography was to take the proffered camera and duck around constantly shooting pictures so you could later choose one you liked, it seemed to work well and was at least efficient!

As soon as we finished he dismissed this area and we jumped on another bus (from the top) down the other smoother side and onto a new area.

At this new area again we jumped out and walked directly through a rabbit warren of little paths to the best viewing places, some busy but famous, and some quite unknown but still very pretty. Soon we got into a rhythm, we arrived, we all looked together, I took some pictures of mountains, he took some of me, we moved on, we did ask to see everything in a day and he was damn well going to do his best.

The mountains themselves were beautiful, huge karst mountains towering up as huge plateaus, through their life being worn away into a forest of individual peaks before slowly falling away leaving isolated monoliths towering towards the sky. In their final stage leaving huge valleys littered with the bodies of these fallen monuments. 

The number of people around these places was pretty high but the guide told us this was low season and pointed out just how wide the roads and queue systems were, designed for the summer rush! The avatar creators were originally going to use a another Chinese location to film but at the last minute the government of this area offered the use of their mountains for free in return for some publicity and their strategy seems to have worked, on the day we were there an average 10,000 people came through the gates, and that was low season, high season that trebles to more than 30,000, and special holidays it can go even higher! with each one paying 250rmb a go that equals a nice earner for the government around here!

The guide tried to explain to us why we should pay an additional fee to enter a replica miao minority village, considering the way the media portrays the chinese attitude to minorities they really seem to love visiting replica villages, taking pictures with people in replica dress and buying 'traditional handycrafts', and the minorities really put a big markup on everything, even for the chinese!  We explained we had seen plenty of fake traditional villages thank you and we would like to carry on without going inside this mockup, he seemed pleased, I'm not sure he likes them either!

As we walked along we saw a tiny path down the side of the hill, barely one man wide, snaking back and forth down into the valley, this, our guide informed us, was the old road to town, a good days walk through the mountains to anything resembling a road before you could get a bus, and come back the next day, now their our roads and buses and hotels and all sorts, but before this was a deserted and very remote part of China, and until 30 years ago the home of many smugglers and bandits! He even showed us some caves used be them as stashes or basic living areas.

This place would be an amazing place to explore yourself, chuck on a backpack and a tent and wander along the miles of paths, camping out and popping up into the visitors centres now and then for a shower. I would love to take a week just walking around and taking pictures, alas the government doesn't allow this and you must stay outside in the masses of surrounding hotels and bus around, limiting you to not exploring down into the valleys too much.

The different valleys all had the formations in different stages of development, the older ones more isolated and smooth pillars, the younger ones huge forests of craggy needles pointing up, each one apparently different but after a few hours of this the novelty started to wear off and the pictures and mountains started to look the same, the guide pointed out some with special stories or names which was interesting but the chinese have a remarkable talent at removing charm from a place, the more isolated less touristy places kept their breathtaking reverence but the more popular and famous landmarks and peaks were covered in people and all nicely roped off with carefully made concrete steps and buses for anything more than a slight walk. It really took the achievement out of any real mountain climbing and of course the avatar connected was well and truly milked with statues, pictures and plaques at every location from the film and the chance to be digitally added to an avatar backdrop etc, there were also young girls in replica minority clothing dragging young guys over for a photo with a minority girl for only £1, they asked me but I replied that if they wanted a photo with a foreigner I would also need £1, they decided against it and moved on to easier prey....

One famous part has a natural bridge out from the main plateu to the top of a pillar forming a huge natural arch you can walk over, very famous, and also very pretty, and also there is a railing which is literally covered in padlocks. The tradition is to buy or bring a padlock and inscribe it with you names and your wishes for love, life or family and lock it to the railing thereby ensuring it will come true. The chinese never wanting to miss a good thing then started selling padlocks with an engraving service and before long it had gotten out of hand! The place was covered with hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of padlocks along every railing around this flying island of rock, some old, some new, and hanging from anything you could lock a padlock to, trees, railings, you name it....

Another strange tradition is to wedge sticks under rocks so that they look as if they are supporting the rock, as seen in my pictures, the chinese version of cairn I guess....

Moving on we went to the highest point in the park with a nice view out and on the very top, a cable car station, which takes you down over the trees and animals (apparently including monkeys, although I didn't see any!) down to a 5 star toilet and bus stop after which we were both getting pretty tired. We asked if we had seen the best of the park and when he replied that we had we took a few pictures around a deserted stream in a valley bottom and he helped us get a shuttle to the main entrance before picking up the cheap bus back to the town. I arrived in my room tired, dirty and mountained out for a while but happy, I had beated the system and paid a discount rate for a personal guided tour, avoided buying any tacky souvenirs or avatar merchandise and seen what I really wanted to see, the mountains themselves, all the other touristy stuff can take a running jump...