Z H A N G J I A J I E, or 张家界 if you like

Ever seen Avatar? Ever imagined how it would be like being a tall, blue man, who walks around in incredible beautiful scenery, surrounded by tall thin mountain peaks and blue skies? So had we, and when we heard a rumor that the author of "Avatar" was inspired by the national park Zhangjiajie, we had no doubt - we were going to this national park!

Zhangjiajie is a national mountain park in Hunan, China. There are 243 pillar peaks, each over 1,000 meters high, around 23 species of tare animals and 3000 species of plants in this misty world. It really looks like Avatar, there is even an Avatar figure on one of the peaks.

We spent three days walking around in the mountains, hiking peaks, drinking hot chocolat with tapioca pearls and freezing half to death because of the December cold.

The park got a free hop on and of buses which drives all around the park during daytime. This makes it really easy exploring different areas every day. 

Wingoo Village

Its a cool mountain village, with a great vantage point - which we sadly did not get to see, because we had amazingly much fog the first day.

Highest natural bridge in the world

Tianzhi Mountain

WHERE TO STAY:

We stayed at the International Youth Hostel in the national park. 
There are two international youth hostels, one downtown and one in the national park located on one of the peaks.
When we arrived with train in Zhangjiajie, we took a cab to the downtown hostel and got them to ship our luggage by bus to their hostel in the national park. From there we took a bus to national park, and hiked up to the hostel. 

A little tip: We stayed at the hostel early december, and it was freezing. They have almost no heaters, except in the beds where they got something similar to a carseat warmer (supernice!), so I would definitly recommend bringing some warm clothes and socks if you dont want to spent all your evnings in bed just to keep warm - like we did. Also the hostel have a nice little menu with cold drinks, noodles, fried rice and fried beef, but they don´t have any hot drinks. So bring your own tea, hot chocolate, and snacks.

HOW TO GET THERE:

We took an overnight train from Hong Kong to Guangzhou, and from Guangzhou to Zhangjiajie. It took around 18 hours, and costed app. 400 HKD one way (300nok). 
In Guangzhou you have to change from the central trainstation to the north(?) trainstation, which can be a bit timeconsuming since you probably don´t speak chinese and theres not a bunch of people speaking english. We got someone in Hong Kong to write in Chinese where we were going, so we just had to show the note to a Taxi driver.

Cramped on 3rd class. But its way cooler travelling this way instead of 1rd or 2nd class. People smoke on the train, their load and they spit. Bring earplugs.