Travel Diary: Zhang Jia Jie – Visiting the Inspiration for Avatar

Hi All! This is my post for my fourth week in Hong Kong! (I’m one week behind)

But last week, I left HK on Wednesday to visit my aunt in Guangzhou, and then we did a four day tour in Zhangjiajie. Zhangjiajie is a city in Hunan province and is best known for their mountains.

I’ve never been to Guangzhou before, nor the HK train station. So it was a bit nerve wracking to take the trip by myself! But I felt really accomplished when I arrived in one piece to Guangzhou haha!

The train was surprisingly comfy

After spending the night in Guangzhou we woke up at 5am to catch the 7am high speed train. 3 hours train ride, and 4 hour bus ride later, we arrived to Zhang Jia Jie.

First off we visited the historic site of the Tu ethnic family

These are some of their cultural artifacts.

The next day we went to visit Tian Men Shan. Which literally means sky door mountain. To get there, we took a cable car up. Which was the steepest and longest cable car ride ever!!!

On the mountain, there was one section that was all glass! It was really neat and frightening for a lot of people.

Another highlight was climbing to see this cave. Redbull actually did a contest once and had people fly through it in its wingsuit!

On the third day, we visited another mountain. Does this look familiar to you at all? These were actually the inspiration for the background in the movie Avatar!! Pretty cool huh?

There were monkeys in this park!

On the last day we walked down a canyon! I was getting a bit tired of taking pictures at this point so not much more to see.

Overall it was a really neat trip. But it makes me appreciate the living conditions back at home so much more. The city Zhangjiajie is not known to most, I have never even heard of it before now. The parks were really beautiful, but the city still needs a lot of development.

Check out my other Asia travel experiences!

-Weekend Trip to Macau from Hong Kong

-Must Sees in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bali

-Quick Trips to Guangzhou, Shanghai, Cheung Chau Island