Zhangjiajie - Wulingyuan - National Forest Park

It drew us into the green. This sentence describes our anticipation for the national park near Wulingyuan very well. We had enough of cities for now, as nice as Xi'an was.

We consciously chose this area in China to experience rural life and nature. The images we saw beforehand were incredibly impressive. Those who have seen the movie "Avatar" may remember the towering and partially overgrown rock formations. This film was partly shot there. And this landscape really exists. It seems otherworldly and once again shows us how beautiful our planet can be.

After a delicious breakfast (vegetarian noodle soup, steamed bread, spicy vegetables, Chinese dumplings, and fried eggs - which would rather be considered lunch/dinner in Europe) we made our way to the park.

The entrance was only a 5-minute walk from our hotel, which was relatively isolated in a very small village. We had previously informed ourselves about hiking opportunities and Max downloaded a hiking map, which we used as a guide. The tour was supposed to be 4 hours long and especially beautiful. After just a few meters, when the rocks/mountains revealed themselves to us, we couldn't stop marveling. Birds were chirping from everywhere and monkeys were climbing around. And above all: not a soul in sight. Chinese tourists are very lazy and prefer to take the cable car instead of walking uphill. Lucky for us. The path was beautiful. Vegetatively, it was very close to a rainforest. Due to the high humidity, we started sweating quickly, even though it wasn't a strenuous hike. The sweating even went so far that Max stained his white t-shirt with his pants! When we reached the top, we were greeted with a view straight out of a fairy tale. But since pictures speak louder than a thousand words, you better see for yourself:

Natural spectacle in the National Forest Park

We started the second day with the same breakfast, but we noticed that Nadine's noodle soup bowl was one size larger than before. Our source of information, Bing - we now "binge" because we are denied "Googling" - informed us that it is customary in China to leave some food behind. This means that one is full. Since we always finished our food, the cook probably felt obliged to serve us more.

Overall, we spent our days in the National Forest Park very sporty. We went hiking and continued with our training plan that we created for our Asian trip.

The absolute highlight there was the National Park itself. But the other sights and places that we were able to experience were also very impressive. They were all connected to the National Park.

From pure nature, we continue to Shanghai, the biggest city in China. We are excited to see what awaits us there.

The bus ride from our accommodation to the airport was exciting as well. The bus driver would probably be banned from driving for life in Germany. Constantly honking, he enforced his traffic rules. If only a truck had come around the blind curve, this blog post probably wouldn't have gone online...

But we are still alive! To end this post on a positive note.