is there poodle in my noodle

After the intensity of visiting two of northern China’s mega-cities (exceeding 10 million inhabitants), we were elated to find ourselves back in our natural habitat. We breathed a sigh of relief as we drove up the mountains, surrounded by vegetation, altitude, and our kindred primate spirits.

Zhangjiajie National Forest Park is a national treasure, hosting almost 20 square miles of unique pillar-like formations. Climbers reading this may assume these gravity-defying towers are made of limestone, famously seen in, for example, Guilin in China, Ha Long Bay in Vietnam, and even the Peak District.

The pillars are actually made from quartz sandstone, and amazingly, the result of environmental physical erosion. Deposited and tightly pressed together over millions of years, sandstone was turned into hills and mountains due to the uplift of the earth’s crust. These were cut into parallel stone peaks under the force of weathering, primarily expanding ice in the winter. If this were not a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it would definitely be a world-class rock climbing destination!

The weather is damp year-round, which enables the dense foliage to grow so jungular. It was indeed moist during our four-day visit, and so we dressed up like big bananas and wore podiatry Durex to fit right in with the locals.

One of the park’s pillars, the 1,080-metre Southern Sky Column, was officially renamed Avatar Hallelujah Mountain in honour of the movie Avatar in January 2010. The director and production designers drew inspiration for the film’s floating rocks from mountains in Zhangjiajie.

Another notable feature of the park is its massive elevator; the world’s tallest outdoor lift at 326 metres.

The park also hosts a population of cheeky and opportunistic monkeys whose job it is to look really cute and then thieve your food/hat/bag/camera (or bite your hand off).

In keeping with China’s mad efficiency, the park’s daily 20,000 visitors are managed exceptionally well, bussed and cable-carred around with a facial-recognition system acting in lieu of visitors’ tickets. 330 free shuttle buses transport hordes of humans from site to site. Queueing can be a real issue here when the park reaches its 50,000 capacity, but this is the end of peak season, and so we had the luxury of hopping on and off without delay.

The Chinese can at first appear to be quite brusque and pushy. However, we came to realise that this is probably a required trait in a country with 1.4 billion inhabitants. Our interpersonal interactions have brought us much joy; we have had so many laughs and jokes with the locals, and they relish saying hello and practising one or two words with huge smiles on their faces.

We have also enjoyed watching tour groups around the park, all wearing matching outfits, breaking into song and dance even in the most inclement of weathers. It is a fascinating nation, and we feel we have hardly scratched the surface. Here’s to more making friends along the way!

We didn’t think anyone would read this apart from our parents! It’s really nice to know it’s being enjoyed by more than a handful of people  😘