zhangjiajie

Well, we battled a seven hour missed connection on Yeleu Mountain in Changsha (good song writing material), extremely awkward mid-night train schedules, exceedingly confusing place names (Zhangjiajie city, Zhangjiajie village, and Zhangjiajie park), and loud speaker packing tour groups, but we successfully saw, encountered, and conquered the world's most beautiful place. Needless to say, it was worth the hassle. A few notes, and then I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, because words cannot do Zhangjiajie nearly enough justice (not that pictures can either.) In the village, the restaurants prominently displayed caged or tubbed (aquatic) creatures that you could consume for your meal. This is not unusual in Asia, but the inclusion of what appeared to be some sort of mole was. The park is impossibly beautiful, with sharp, vertical, craggy columns of peaks straight out of an ancient Chinese scroll painting. The vegetation literally cascades down the shear sandstone faces. We climbed roughly 4,000 stairs to get to the top of one of the peaks on the first day, and Taylor charged up those stairs like a pro. The crowds verged on driving me to madness, but on the second day I ran to the park at shortly after the 7:00 opening and raced past the tour groups for a personal re-climb up 4,000 different stairs in a more secluded location. Overall, fanastic is about the only way to describe the experience. Oh, I forgot to mention that it was amazing to be able to breathe a full lungs-worth of air and not taste burning.

Now for the pictures.

This is what a mole-eating town looks like:


There were many stairs:


Did I mention there were monkeys?


It was pretty nice on top:


Maybe the morning light was best:


I have perhaps one million more thoughts and pictures to share, but Taylor and our new friends are getting hungry and anxious for dinner, and this computer is about the speed of a desert tortoise. I'll see you down the Li River a ways.