This past week has been very
eventful. In an update to my plans for the rest of the year, I will be going to
Milan, Italy this fall, instead of London, England. I will then be returning to
GW for the Spring semester. While I had been very excited to go to London, due
to the classes that were offered and the classes I need to take to graduate, it
did not make much sense for me to go. In Milan, I will be taking Italian
classes every day, as well as a fashion design class and a few business
classes. I am very excited to get to experience Italy.
On Wednesday night, Nadia and I
left Shanghai to spend the rest of the week in Zhangjiajie. Zhangjiajie is a
national park with column-style mountains that inspired the setting for the
movie Avatar (The one with the blue
people). We flew there on Wednesday night and arrived just before midnight. We
took a Didi to our hostel and were welcomed to find out that since the shared
bunks that we had booked sold out, we received a private room that turned out
to be very nice. Before heading to sleep, we found a man serving up delicious
noodles, and bought snacks for our impending days of hiking. 
The next day, we woke up and took a
bus to the national park. We were staying at a hostel in the park for the rest
of our trip. I texted our owner and asked which bus to take in order to get to
the hostel. Unfortunately, we could not find a bus going to the destination
that she had described, and so we simply took a bus to the national park. This
mistake turned what should have been a one-hour bus ride into a one-hour bus
ride, four ten-minute shuttle rides, a fifteen-minute hike, and then another
ten-minute walk, all in the rain. This series of travel methods finally led to
us arriving at the hostel. It wasn’t exactly what was advertised online, but it
got the job done.
We stayed at the base of a cable
car station, and so that evening we took the cable car up to the top, then
walked to a lookout nearby and saw our first real view of the mountains. It was
pretty spectacular. Unfortunately, at this point, it was nearly 7 PM and so the
cable car had closed, and we had to hike down. About halfway into our descent,
the sun set, and we hiked in darkness. We got back to the hostel and enjoyed a
dinner of green peppers with fried pork, potatoes and pork, and rice while
chatting with a Canadian who was studying in southern China, and a girl named
Maggie who was from Texas and was simply traveling. We passed out shortly
after this. Step Count: 18,796, Flight Count: 59.
On Friday, we woke up and had the
house breakfast of noodles, steamed bread, a fried egg, and tea. It wasn’t as
good as the dinner, but if filled you up and kept you going for a few hours. We
headed out around 9 AM and hiked up the trail that we had previously gone down
the night before. As we got close to reaching the top of the cable car station,
we decided to veer off and hike to a “mansion.” After climbing up and down 4
rather sketchy metal ladders, we reached the peak. It turned out to be much
less of a physical structure and much more of a lookout. Unfortunately, it was
pretty rainy that day and so the clouds prevented us from seeing too much. We
headed down relatively shortly after arriving due to the large crowds and tried
to head to Tianzi mountain to go hiking.
Tianzi mountain has one of the best
lookouts, but we were going to go on a lesser known trail that was near it.
When we arrived, we saw a sign for McDonalds, and wanting ice cream, we headed
there. When we arrived, we ran into Maggie, one of the girls who was staying at
our hostel. We decided to hang out and enjoy our ice cream and talk. While
there, the rain picked back up, and not wanting to brave the conditions, we
ended up spending three hours at McDonalds. Eventually we took the shuttle back
to the cable car station and then the cable car down to our hostel. That night
we had pork, vegetables and rice again for dinner. We also watched Avatar, so that I could gain some
context for the park. Step Count: 14,047, Flight Count: 179
On Saturday, we got up at 8 and
headed out at 9 to spend the full day hiking. We decided to take a longer and
more scenic route up to the top of the cable car station. In the process of
finding the trail, we ran into Maggie again who decided to spend the morning
hiking with us. The hike was very pretty but took about three hours to get to
the top. Granted, there were a few very nice scenic lookouts along the way.
Once we got to the cable car station, we took a shuttle to Tianqao which had
several of the pillar-type mountains that the park is known for. When we
arrived, it was rather overwhelmingly busy, in comparison to our hike in the
morning where we saw nearly no one. We spent about two hours walking around,
looking at different peaks and just taking it all in. 
After this, we took the shuttle to
complete the hike that we weren’t able to do the day previous. When we arrived,
we realized that it was more of a road than a hiking trail, but we still
followed it for about an hour and a half before hitching a ride back to the bus
station. From there, we took a shuttle to Tianzi mountain, found a quiet spot,
and did yoga for about a half hour to help stretch out our muscles. It had been
a long day and we were both sore. Exhausted, we took the shuttle back to the
cable car station and spent an hour hiking down before reaching our hostel
around 8:30 PM. We showered, ate, and fell asleep very quickly. Step Count: 34,208,
Flight Count: 238.
On Sunday, we slept in until 9. We
then got up, ate the breakfast of steamed bread, noodles and an egg, and then
headed back to Zhangjiajie city. Our hostel owner got us a car to take us back,
which seemed like a much better option than the bus. However, it ended up being
one hell of a ride. The van driver continued to pick up more people until there
were eight of us and a large basket of vegetables in the car. The mix of smells
was pungent, and the road was incredibly bumpy. Overall it was a pretty
miserable ride, but he took us right where we needed to go, so that was a plus.
We spent the afternoon at Tianmen
mountain. We began by taking a bus up one of the windiest roads in the world,
then hiked up 999 steps to get to Tianmen cave. It is a very famous sight in
China. We then took seven escalators, all located inside the mountain, up to
the top of the mountain. From there, we walked around, taking in the views and
even walking on a glass bridge. It was slightly tacky but still cool. We
We then grabbed dinner at a local
restaurant before heading to a coffee shop to do work for a few hours. Around
9:30, we headed to the airport. We had a flight back to Shanghai at 11:30. The
flight was fine, although the legroom was incredibly tight. We ended up landing
in Shanghai at 1:20 and getting back to our apartment at 2:30. It was an
exhausting last day, but it allowed us to truly take full advantage of the day.
Step Count: 19,397, Flight Count: 137.
Zhangjiajie was a truly amazing
place. The mountains are unreal, and I would recommend it to anyone who is
spending at least two weeks in China. It could be done in as little as a day,
or you could spend a week there. I have felt a true yearning for nature since
being in Shanghai, and Zhangjiajie really helped fulfill these desires.
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