Zhangjiajie National Forest Park

Zhangjiajie National Forest Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Zhangjiajie is the park of sandstone pillars in Hunan that inspired the floating mountains of Avatar, and it is sold in two layers: the entry ticket and the tours. The park ticket, valid for four days, covers the whole Wulingyuan scenic area with its internal shuttle buses, but not the cable cars, the Bailong elevator or the Tianzi mountain funicular, which are paid separately at each station; combo tickets bundle the entry with the elevator and one or two cable cars and save queuing, and the versions that add the Tianmen Mountain cable car or the evening show are a different site on the other side of the city. The one-day private tours with a guide and driver are the practical choice for first-time visitors, because the park is large, the signage is in Chinese and the shuttle system is confusing;

a guide plans the route from the Yuanjiajie viewpoints to the Golden Whip stream and handles the tickets. Two-day tours split the park into Yuanjiajie and Tianzi mountain on one day and the Golden Whip stream and Yangjiajie on the second, which is the right pace, and the multi-day packages from Zhangjiajie city or Chongqing add Tianmen Mountain, the glass bridge in the Grand Canyon and Furong old town. Exoskeleton rentals for the stairs are a recent oddity. Independent visitors take the bus from Zhangjiajie city to the Forest Park gate or the Wulingyuan gate, buy the ticket at the window with a passport and use the free shuttles.

Visiting Zhangjiajie National Forest Park: what you will see

The forest park was China's first, declared in 1982, and covers 48 square kilometres at the heart of the 400-square-kilometre Wulingyuan scenic area, which UNESCO listed in 1992 and which became a global geopark in 2004. The landscape is a forest of more than three thousand quartz-sandstone pillars, many over two hundred metres high, carved not by dissolving limestone but by frost, water and the roots of the pines that cling to their tops, so that the towers stand in mist above wooded ravines like the mountains of a Song painting. The Yuanjiajie section, reached by the Bailong elevator, a 326-metre glass lift up a cliff face, has the most famous viewpoints: the Avatar Hallelujah Mountain, the pillar formerly called Southern Sky Column and renamed in 2010, and the Number One Bridge, a natural rock arch between two towers.

Tianzi mountain, reached by cable car, looks over a sea of peaks from its viewing platforms, and Yangjiajie has the narrow Tianbo Mansion ridge with ladders and chains. At the bottom of the park the Golden Whip stream flows for seven kilometres through a gorge under the pillars, a flat, shaded walk among macaques that steal from bags, and the Huangshizhai plateau above the Forest Park gate has a loop of viewpoints reached by cable car or by a long staircase. The park is enormously popular with Chinese tourists, and the boardwalks, stairs and platforms are built for the crowds.

Zhangjiajie National Forest Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open daily from about 7 am to 6 pm, with the cable cars and elevator running from around 7.30 am. April to June and September to November are the best months, with clear air in autumn and rhododendrons and mist in spring; summer is hot, humid and rainy but the mist between the pillars is at its most atmospheric, and winter brings snow on the towers and far fewer visitors, though some cable cars close in ice.

Chinese national holidays in early May and early October and the summer school break fill the park to capacity and should be avoided. Enter at opening time and go straight to Yuanjiajie before the tour groups. Allow two days for the forest park and a third for Tianmen Mountain and the glass bridge.