Zhangjiajie

Zhangjiajie is the reason people ask whether a place is real. In the northwest of Hunan province, several thousand sandstone pillars rise out of forested valleys, many of them topped with pine trees and wrapped in mist for much of the year. The landscape inspired the floating mountains in the film Avatar, and one pillar was officially renamed Avatar Hallelujah Mountain in 2010. The name is marketing; the scenery behind it needs none.

The main area is Wulingyuan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1992, which includes Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, China's first national forest park, founded in 1982. Inside it, the landscape divides into zones that feel quite different from one another. Yuanjiajie holds the most famous pillars and the viewing platforms around the Hallelujah Mountain. Tianzi Mountain, to the north, is higher and opens onto wide panoramas that are at their best at sunrise or when cloud fills the valleys below. The Golden Whip Stream is the opposite experience: a flat walk of roughly seven kilometres along the valley floor, where you look up at the pillars rather than across at them, with macaques in the trees and far fewer people than on the ridges.

The park is big enough that one day barely scratches the surface. Your entry ticket covers several consecutive days, and shuttle buses link the gates and viewpoints, which makes a two or three day visit both practical and good value. The Bailong Elevator, a glass lift built into the side of a cliff, climbs more than 300 metres in a minute or two and saves a long walk up to the Yuanjiajie plateau. It is also where queues build fastest, so we plan around it rather than through it.

Two further sights sit outside the forest park. Tianmen Mountain rises directly over Zhangjiajie city and is reached by one of the longest passenger cable cars in the world, followed by a road with ninety-nine hairpin bends and a stairway to Tianmen Cave, a natural arch in the cliff face. Glass walkways bolted to the rock let you look straight down. The Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon, about an hour from Wulingyuan, is known for its glass-bottomed bridge, which opened in 2016 and spans the gorge at a height of around 300 metres. Both are dramatic; neither is somewhere to go if heights unsettle you.

Mist is the defining feature and the main variable. Cloud drifting between the pillars gives the photographs their mood, but on some days it hides the view entirely. Build a spare day into your plan, and stay flexible about which area you visit when, because a clear morning at Tianzi Mountain is worth rearranging everything else for.

Spring from April to May and autumn from September to early November usually bring the most stable weather and the greenest or most colourful forest. Summer is warm, wet and crowded, and the Chinese national holidays, especially the first week of May and the first week of October, bring queues that can stretch for hours. Winter is cold and quiet, and a rare dusting of snow on the pillars is one of the most striking sights in the country, though some paths close in icy conditions.

Most visitors base themselves in Wulingyuan town, next to the park's main entrance, rather than in Zhangjiajie city, which is forty minutes away. Staying close to the gate lets you be inside early, before the tour groups, and gives you easy access to the evening return buses. Zhangjiajie has its own airport with domestic connections, and the high-speed rail network now reaches Zhangjiajie West station, which links the area with Changsha and beyond.

This is Tujia country, and the region's minority culture shows up in food, architecture and local performances. Expect smoked and cured meats, sour pickles and generous use of chilli, which the Hunanese take seriously. Travel here is also highly digital: mobile payment apps such as Alipay and WeChat Pay are the norm, both now accept foreign cards, and setting them up before arrival avoids a lot of friction.

A three-day outline gives the weather room to cooperate. On the first day, enter early and walk the Golden Whip Stream, where the valley floor stays pleasant even when cloud sits on the ridges. On the second, ride up to Yuanjiajie and follow the plateau to Tianzi Mountain, timing the viewpoints for the afternoon light or the next sunrise if you stay nearby. Keep the third day for Tianmen Mountain or the Grand Canyon glass bridge, choosing whichever suits the forecast. Good walking shoes matter more than anything else you pack: the paths involve a lot of stone steps, and they are slippery after rain. Carry a light rain layer in every season, and keep snacks out of sight on the valley walks, because the macaques have learned exactly what a plastic bag means.

We suggest three to four days in total. Our guides know the paths that stay quiet when the viewing platforms are packed, and our experiences here include the glass bridge and canyon walk as well as a sunrise approach to Tianzi Mountain timed around the light and the crowds.