After a not super early breakfast, which was good because I needed to recover a bit from the previous early and very early rises. The Wandelgek showered and the went down for breakfast.

Now before entering the awesome world of Zhangjiajie/ Wulingyuan’s natural beauty or for movie buffs like me: before landing my spacecraft on Pandora, I’d like to tell you of this chinese nature  photography book I bought in 2004, far before Pandora came into being. I just noticed it lying on a shelf in my local bookshop and the cover was so inviting that I started browsing through and got completely and utterly hooked.

It was a book with mostly color photography and a few black and whites by photographer Sun Jianhua. Its title was Zhangjiajie: Majestic Mountains of Hunan, China.

Back then, this was a completely unknown area of China to me of which I had never heard before, but nevertheless, somehow all the photo’s seemed so familiar. It was like looking at them and getting a deja vu, knowing that I never visted a landscape like that. It’s eerie. How was that possible? Did I unknowingly reincarnate? It took me a while to find out. The familiarity was caused by having seen and liked a lot of Chinese landscapes in drawings, cartoons and paintings, from a very young age until now. It appeared that there were certain mountainous areas in China, like e.g. Huangshan Mountain, but also Zhangjiajie, which had been inspiring for most Chinese artists (not just painters).

When I was young, I was a fan of Rupert Bear comics …

… and also of Disney’s Silly Symphony animations and the comics that were derived from that and got published in Donald Duck magazine:

Now everyone of you can see the strange shapes of Chinese trees and the strange shape of Chinese mountains. As I got older I thought of those as having been phantastic orgasms of the free mind and spirit of the artist, but later I started noticing in photographs of chinese landscape photographers and painters that these landscapes and trees were seeming very real.

And then came James Cameron’s movie Avatar, where he took us viewers on a 3D journey to Pandora …

So this explains my longing to visit this area and now was the time to do so.

Gaby and the driver were spot on time for picking me up and we drove to the entrance gate of the:

Zhangjiajie National Forest Park

Zhangjiajie National Forest Park (Chinese: 湖南张家界国家森林公园 is a national forest park located in Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province, China. It is one of several national parks within the Wulingyuan Scenic Area.

Map:

Bailong Elevator

The taxi drove through the spectacular entrance of the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park which was a high pagoda on the outskirt of Wulingyuan town…,

Now all the areas encircled in the map above are actually much higher in altitude than the level where e.g. Wulingyuan Town is, because there are these almost circular mountain ranges, which encircle the famous rock towers, …

… so we needed to go up and what better way than to do this the Chinese way, meaning: efficient and quick. So we took the highest open air elevator in the world 😀

The Bailong Elevator (Chinese: 百龙电梯; literally Hundred Dragons Elevator) is a glass double-deck elevator built onto the side of a cliff in the Wulingyuan area of Zhangjiajie, China, an area noted for more than 3,000 quartzite sandstone pillars and peaks across most of the site, many over 200 metres (660 ft) in height.

In order to ascend to the top of one such pillar, and to avoid a two-hour hike, the elevator ascends its height of 326 m (1,070 ft) in just one minute and 32 seconds, after a 2015 upgrade. It was recognised by Guinness World Records as the world’s tallest outdoor elevator on 16 July 2015 and is purported to be the fastest passenger elevator with the largest loading capacity.

Construction of the elevator began in October 1999, and it was opened to the public by 2002. The elevator was built into the quartz sandstone cliff face, with the lower 505 feet embedded inside the mountain wall, and the upper 565 feet consisting of exposed steel derrick.

The environmental effects of the elevator have been a subject of debate and controversy, as the Wulingyuan area was designated a World Heritage Site in 2002. Operations were stopped for 10 months in 2002–2003, reportedly due to safety concerns, not environmental ones, because of its location in an earthquake-prone area.

Ascending by elevator goes in the blink of an eye …

It

We were first going to visit Yuanjiajie as it is called.

Yuanjiajie

As part of China’s first national forest park (Wulingyuan), it is a must-visit superhot spot to admire the prototype of the floating Hallelujah Mountains in “Avatar” and the illusive nature with thousands of peculiar hills with clouds and mists hovering. There was no mist today so nothing of the hovering hills, but with a bit of imagination it’s possible to envision the scene 😀.

Also without the mist, the views are spectacular …

We kept walking and got closer to the Halleluja Mountains of Pandora …

In the first part of the walk there was still a lot of sunlight directly from above and I had to do some photshopping to get these first photo’s right but the results are quite good nonetheless.

The Quartz Stone Pillars rose far above us, seemingly fragile, but looks can deceive  …

Trees have dug their roots deep into the rocky cracks and crevasses that can be found on these steep pillars …

What I absolutely love are those views over the mountains, seeing them layer by layer disappearing in the distance …

In color these layers change from dark almost black into dark blue, blue, light blue and almost white …

Beneath an example of me playing with Photoshop (or actually with Gimp, which is a free open source kinda photoshop)…

Which picture did you prefer? I like the darker one more.

Then we arrived at the area of the famous Hallelujah Mountains and they really were spectacular.

You may not know about Yuanjiajie (袁家界), but you must have watched the world-famous movie “Avatar” and still remember those stone mountains floating in the air. Yuanjiajie, located in the central part of  Wulingyuan Scenic area is rightly the shooting location of those “Hallelujah Mountains” in reality. With so fascinating scenery, particularly its mysterious view with clouds and mists after some drizzle, Yuanjiajie changes extremely appealing to global tourists and is praised as the mysterious “Pandora World”. Once you open the magic world, you will catch the enchanting sightseeing of thousands of peculiar mountains standing spectacularly with distinct shapes and postures from the deep valley in front of your eyes, experience how fast an elevator in the world can reach, know how nature “builds” a stone bridge without manpower.

Pandora

Avatar is a 2009 epic science fiction film co-produced, co-edited, written, and directed by James Cameron. The cast includes Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez and Sigourney Weaver. The first installment in the Avatar film series, it is set in the mid-22nd century, when humans are colonizing Pandora, a lush habitable moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system, in order to mine the valuable unobtanium, a room-temperature superconductor mineral. The expansion of the mining colony threatens the continued existence of a local tribe of Na’vi, a humanoid species indigenous to Pandora. The title of the film refers to a genetically engineered Na’vi body operated from the brain of a remotely located human that is used to interact with the natives of Pandora.

The quartz rock pillars look amazing in the sunlight and the trees are competing to get the best (read highest) spots from where they can absorb most sunlight …

There were not that many people living on Pandora and the Na’vi kept hidden even though there were extensive searches for them using high tech drones 🤣

I would have my own drone adventure later on 🙃.

A bit halfway this walk The Wandelgek arrived at this flat area which had a large pond with stone tortoises and a dragon turtle in it…

Now, having followed narrow cliff hanging pathways we reached the area of the Hallelujah Mountains, where I was gonna be initiated in flying my flying Mountain Banshee💙.

In 1982, the park was recognized as China’s first national forest park with an area of 4,810 ha (11,900 acres). Zhangjiajie National Forest Park is part of a much larger 397.5 km² (153.5 sq mi) Wulingyuan Scenic Area. In 1992, Wulingyuan was officially recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was then approved by the Ministry of Land and Resources as Zhangjiajie Sandstone Peak Forest National Geopark (3,600 km² (1,400 sq mi)) in 2001. In 2004, Zhangjiajie geopark was listed as a UNESCO global geopark.

This was quite an eye popping event …

Much of the fiction takes place on the world of Pandora, which with a biodiversity of bioluminescent  species ranging from six-legged animals to other types of exotic fauna and flora. The Pandoran ecology forms a vast biological neural network spanning the entire lunar surface into which the Na’vi and other creatures can connect. The strength of this collective consciousness is powerfully illustrated when the human invaders are defeated in battle by the Pandora ecology after the resolute Na’vi were nearly defeated. Cameron used a team of expert advisors in order to make the various examples of fauna and flora as scientifically feasible as possible. Cameron hopes to explore the other moons in future sequels, books, and spin-offs.

Do you know that feeling? When suddenly everything looks a little bit better than it did before?

When you feel a bit more powerful, healthier and wiser than it did before? When you sense you’re a bit happier than you were before. Well that is how I felt entering Pandora ….

I even felt like a Na’vi warrior walking there, climbing the floating Hallelujah Mountains in search for my Mountain Banshee to bond with.

The most notable geographic features of the park are the pillar-like formations that are seen throughout the park. Although resembling karst terrain, this area is not underlain by limestones and is not the product of chemical dissolution, which is characteristic of limestone karst. They are the result of many years of physical, rather than chemical, erosion. Much of the weathering that forms these pillars is the result of expanding ice in the winter and the plants that grow on them. The weather is moist year-round, and as a result, the foliage is very dense. The weathered material is carried away primarily by streams. These formations are a distinct hallmark of the Chinese landscape, and can be found in many ancient Chinese paintings.

One of the park’s quartz-sandstone pillars, the 1,080-metre (3,540 ft)  Southern Sky Column, was officially renamed “Avatar Hallelujah Mountain” (Chinese: 阿凡达-哈利路亚山) in honor of the movie Avatar in January 2010.

The film’s director and production designers said that they drew inspiration for the floating rocks from mountains from around the world, but mainly from Guilin, Huangshan, and Zhangjiajie in Hunan province.

There were trails glued to the mountains, which we followed along the edges. The views were spectscular everywhere …

…and after every bend the view completely changed and showed another forest of quartz stone pillars …

The 3D depth of these views were amazing. The pillars further away slowly got darker and then blue-er until they disappeared in the haze…

The pine trees were quite different from those I knew from where I lived in north western Europe. Not a different species  but a different way of growing and thus a different silhouette.

I’m gonna stop writing now for a while because the photo’s speak for themselves. Enjoy …

Here the viewing platforms, pathways and stairs are visible …

 

 

 

 

It was time for some serious flights through tge Hallelujah Mountains on top of my Mountain Banshee …

 

I’ve seen the movie Avatar in 2009 and was blown away by its visual splendour in 3D, like many people who saw it for the first time were. The only movie that did the same was Avatar: The Way of Water, which I saw in 2022. The quality of the 3D effects is so much better than that from any other movie in between. In tge 1st movie I was blown away by the 3D scenes in the green forest of Pandora where the Avatar and the Na’vi run over tree branches, by the scenes after sunsdown and most of all by tge flights on Mountain Banshees between the floating Hallelujah Mountains. And now, here I was standing on Pandora’s surface, feeling like an Avatar and looking at those wonderful mountains of which the upper parts, with a bit of imagination, could be floating. Most or low hanging clouds would have done the trick, but they were not there now.

Let’s fly …

 

 

Unique landscapes like this are what makes China such a wonderful country to visit …

… and revisit over and over again …

There is this circuit of walking pathways which are accessable even for people with babies or toddlers.

This looks so otherworldly that I can imagine very well why James Cameron used this as an inpiration for Pandora …

The Wandelgek Avatar walked around through absorbing the eye popping views …

It was time to tear myself away from these views …

… and start thinking about travelling by bus to Tianzi Mountain National Reserve, which is another part of Zhangjiajie National Forest Park.

The Wandelgek walked toward the bus area which is near the First Natural Bridge under Heaven.

 

The First Natural Bridge under Heaven

 

The First Natural Bridge under Heaven is another must-see in Yuanjiajie. it is a rarely seen “bridge” made purely by natural causes.

This natural stone platform is actually 2 meters wide, spanning 20 meters between the two peaks, with a vertical height of almost 357 meters, creating another wonder in Zhangjiajie.

Again there were viewing platforms for the visitors from where you can make great photo’s or just enjoy the spectacular view …

It is possible to cross the bridge and then have a climb by stairs on the other side.

Nea the First Natural Bridge under Heaven, was a small building where you could buy a drone made video including yourself and the fabulous landscape of Yuanjiajie…

In the movie beneath you can see the First Natural Bridge under Heaven from a larger distance…

 

 

From here it was just a short walk to the bus station.

Bus line from Yuanjiajie to Tianzi Mountain

The bus line runs between the First Natural Bridge under Heaven of Yuanjiajie Scenic Area and the Parking Lot of Tianzi Mountain Nature Reserve. This line has the riding distance of 17.5 kilometer with stops of Shentang Bay, Dianjiang Terrace, Viewing Terrace, Three-way Intersection and Wulong Village or Oolong Village. Buses on this route run on the mountain and it’s also known as the On-Mountain Line. It’s the 2nd line in terms of running length.

On the map below this bus line is shown as the one from The peculiar stone bridge to Tianzishan station.

This way it is possible to ascend at either Yuanjiajie (via the Bailong elevator) and descend at Tianzi Mountain by cable car or vice versa.