The sandstone pillar forest of Zhangjiajie, the Grand Canyon glass bridge, Tianmen Mountain, and a night beside the Tuojiang River in Fenghuang.
Photo: Robynne O / Unsplash
Day 1
The group meets at Da Nang International Airport for the flight to Zhangjiajie. A local guide meets you on arrival and transfers you to the hotel. Depending on landing time, the evening is free to walk around town or rest before the climbing starts.
Day 2
A full day inside Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, where more than three thousand sandstone pillars rise straight out of the forest — the landscape that inspired the floating mountains in Avatar. We take the cable car up to Yuanjiajie, walk out to the First Bridge Under Heaven and the Enchanting Terrace, then descend by the Bailong Elevator, a 326-metre glass lift fixed to the outside of the cliff. The afternoon is spent at the Grand Canyon, crossing the 430-metre glass bridge slung between two rock walls; anyone uneasy with heights can take the canyon floor path instead.
Day 3
The morning starts on the Tianmen Mountain cable car, nearly 7.5 kilometres long, running from the middle of the city to the summit above the famous road of 99 bends. At the top you walk the Guigu skywalk, a glass-floored path cut into a sheer cliff, then climb the 999 steps to Heaven's Gate, a natural arch punched clean through the mountain. In the afternoon we drive about four hours to Fenghuang Old Town, check in and eat in town.
Day 4
The morning is spent on foot in a Miao and Tujia town more than three hundred years old: the two-tier Hong Bridge, the North Gate of the old city wall, and rows of wooden stilt houses standing on poles in the Tuojiang River. You can take a boat along the river or cross it the local way, stepping from stone to stone on the jumping bridge. Early in the afternoon we return to Zhangjiajie, with a free evening on Xihai walking street.
Day 5
After checking out there is time to buy local tea, tung oil and Tujia embroidery. Your guide transfers you to Zhangjiajie Airport for the flight back to Da Nang, where the programme ends.
Zhangjiajie is a walking trip, not a resort trip. Over five days you cover a lot of ground on foot, move constantly between cable cars and lifts, and spend a good deal of time on paths that run along the edge of a cliff. In return you get one of the few places where photographs genuinely fail to convey the thing itself: several thousand rock columns, many over two hundred metres tall, standing straight up out of the forest.
We place Fenghuang in the middle of the itinerary rather than at the end. After two solid days on the mountains, an evening walking slowly along the Tuojiang River is a break the group needs before the flight home. The drive between the two is about four hours, and we schedule it for the afternoon so you never lose the best light of the day to a coach.
Weather here changes quickly and the summits ice over in winter. Bring walking shoes with grip, a windproof jacket and a hat. We prepare and submit the Chinese visa applications on your behalf; you supply a valid passport and the documents on a checklist we send in advance. Group size, hotel category and departure dates are fixed when the contract is signed.
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