seekingmygreaterperhaps

Tianzi Shan is a mountain in the Zhangjiajie National Park, in the southern area of China… and I climbed it. Like a boss. I climbed up it,  but not back down. I’ll get to that later.

First some background- this was the BIG sight to see during my time with Jenna. She had to teach and stuff, so I went by myself. Well Jenna’s friends, who are older and have kids thought this was blasphemy. Helicopter parents to the extreme, they kept trying to find friends of theirs in Zhangjiajie to guide me, and Jenna kept saying, “I think she is fine.” They were doing it out of the kindess of their hearts, but also couldn’t believe I would travel by myself there. This may be cocky of me, but in my head I’m like- I’ve been to places where they don’t speak English before, and I made it. So thus the adventure began.

Jenna took me to the bus station and I hopped on a bus for Wulingyuan, where the mountain is. What should have been a 1 hour bus ride was 2.5… we went through small towns and went about 30 miles/hour because it was twisty turny roads. They didn’t take the same route as the last time we went… but I was in it for the long haul. Also I got the “she can’t speak Chinese” price. I gave my 20 yen and didn’t get any change back, when all the people next to me only paid 15. But since I don’t know how to say, “gimme my change back you hoodlum” in Chinese… I just paid the 20 and sat in silence.

Eventually we made it, and I made my way towards the ticket office for the mountain! After purchasing my ticket I asked for a map, in English, and they handed me a map in Chinese, making for a fun rest of the day. I hopped on a random bus that a lot of people seemed to be headed towards and hypothetically buckled up. We passed beautiful blue lakes in the midst of my first peak of the mountains. They announced the first stop, and I didn’t really know what I was doing, so I got off! This would be the step that marked a very tiring, but very worthwhile journey.

I had beautiful weather, the skies were blue, and no fog to be seen. It was also really hot and humid, so cue Michaella sweating a lot, and Chinese people staring. (Not sure if it was increased staring because of sweat, or just normal amount of staring, the mystery remains.)

This was the first glimpse of the mountain range, and I was eating it up. Then I look to my right and there were monkeys! Jenna told me I may or may not see them, and I saw them in a couple different spots! There’s the wild wildlife that my mom was asking about. (I also saw chickens and a duckling later on.)

A kind man saw me trying to use my self-timer to get a cool pic of me with the mountains and offered to take them for me. He had me stand in a bunch of different places, and I was so thankful. This happened another time later on too! And neither of them asked to take a picture of me or with me afterwards. #blessed.

I think this trip is best explained in photos. Also keep in mind that the floating mountains in the movie Avatar are supposedly inspired by this National Park. So basically I was hanging out with the blue people all day. Except by myself, and add in some Chinese people.

A whole gaggle of monkeys. A little bit before this, I had a moment with a monkey. He was about 4 feet away from me and he was just chilling. He had picked up an apple core someone had tossed and was looking at me probably hopefult that I also had an apple. I really wanted to pet him, but also didn’t want to get attacked… It was just us for a little when. Then a group of Chinese people passed me and the monkey ran away because they were all pointing at me. Psh, people I’m not the wildlife. It was still cool though.

There are people who will carry you up the mountain… for a pretty penny. I was like, psh no. Then I kept climbing and kept climbing and thought, you know, I get it. I can totally see the appeal.

Ooooh ahhhhhhh.

After a while it does start to look like you’re looking at the same thing, but every time it is still magical. I had to stop quite frequently to prevent myself from having a heart attack and heat stroke, so I soaked up some real breathtaking views.

I started noticing that everyone I passed was going down the stairs… and no one was going up. I kept climbing up and up and never getting to go down. I was like, wow this is a really tall mountain, I hope I get to go down soon. Then I was begging and praying to God, please have there be down steps for me, because I might die. Then my hip and knee starting hurting, and I was like, I’ve got to be halfway by this point. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I never got to go downhill. I was the dumb American who climbed all the way up the mountain, and upon getting to the top realized there was a way to either get the bus or cable car and just have to walk downhill. So, I hiked for 4.5 hours uphill, climbing a total of 14,000+ steps (according to my phone’s pedometer), which equals about 6.63 miles. Entirely. Uphill. I have never been so happy to see “bus pick-up ->” in my life. I had no idea I made this mistake, because again, the map was in Chinese. I hopped on the bus and sat next to a tour guide who spoke English and asked her what my options to get back to the bottom were. She said the cable car (which is more $$$), or walk down. At this point I needed to start heading home, so I sucked it up and bought a ticket for the cable car. I was blessed with a cable car to myself.

So there we have it. My incredible, breathtaking, heart stopping (almost literally) trip to Tianzi Shan, in the Zhangjiajie mountains. When I got home I jumped in the shower so quickly; I had salt crusted to me from the copious amounts of sweat I had produced during my hike. Jenna and I got some dinner, and I was in bed by 9pm. Jenna was like, we are such old ladies, and I said, “long hair don’t care.”

Next stop- Changsha to stay with Jenna’s friend before I hope *another* really long overnight train to go to Chengdu, where the panda’s are.

Thanks for reading! As a bonus, here is a picture of my snack near the top of the mountain (it’s all relative). It’s gelatin-y and topped with sugar. Kind of weird, also kind of refreshing.