ON THE TOP OF TIANMEN MOUNTAIN, CHINA

Our problem is our ambitions being too high sometimes.
For this post we originally wanted to do a whole guide with prices, tips, maps for this day of ours on Tianmen mountain  - Tianmen means heaven in Chinese - in Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province in China.

But then time goes so so fast and editing photos is a betch and we were back in Sweden again, back to 9-5 and laundry times and trying to keep floating. And our fenomenal advice and anekdotes from the day were left in the fog on the hill tops.

But you know what? We have to remind ourselves that Something... not quite what we had in mind is still better than Nothing at all.
So here it goes. This are our best pictures from the day when we knocked on heaven's door.

Oh beautiful fog. 

The famous walk of fear wasn'r really that frightening.
The marvelous fog blinded our sight - and that just might be for the better. 

The shoe-covers are fancy though

  

 

 

99 bends road

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SOME TIPS WERE LEFT IN OUR LEAKING MINDS AFTER ALL:

¤ You can either go up on the mountain by the 99 bends bus road, or by cable car. Expect long lines for the second alternative - we waited for more than an hour for the ride in the lift uphills.

¤ Plan your visit time-wise. After our traumatic experience in ZNFP we made sure that we didn't miss the last bus down, and since the park closed by 6-ish that day, we started to sweat by 5 pm by that fact that we were still up on the mountain. We did start the day extremely late though. Try to beat your urge to sleep in (our guilty pleasure) and be there when the park opens.

¤ There's an open chairlift to a higher part of the mountain for an extra fee (the picture with the waving man). The exact sum we can't say for sure since it varies over high and low season, but it was under 100 CNY per person.

¤ The Walk of Fear (the glass walk) also has an additional fee, we think it landed around 30 CNY.

¤ The fog makes the Walk of Fear not so fearsome, so for you thrill seekers; be sure to check the weather over the seasons for a less cloudy experience. (The mountain is also said to be extremely beautiful during winter as the landscape is covered in snow.)

¤ Speaking of snow and weather - it's a lot colder up there then in Zhangjiajie city so bring a backpack with some extra warm clothes.

¤ Food up there is more expensive than on the ground (no surprise there) but still under 30 CNY for dumplings and such. They doesn't have many alternatives though so if your on a special diet or budget, be sure to bring your own food.

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OUR EXPERIENCE AND THOUGHTS

Seeing Heaven's door on Pinterest long long ago, it was quite a breathtaking feeling being there in real life. 

Traveling to the middle of China might be some of the hardest things we've ever done

- nobody understood us, food was strange, we didn't know, like, EVER how to get from A to B and the never-endeing snaping of photos of us made us go slightly insane.

But China is also a place we are so glad we have experienced.

Because going to Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, you always end up on the tourist strokes alongside with other western people - you might go for the authentic feeling but you end up with your alikes anyway since the only people on backpacking trails nowadays are - duh - backpackers and tourists.

But in China, every part of the country has their own tourism and while you're still a tourist, you are among Chinese tourists. You are going on the same trips the chinese go when they have vacation, and it's kind of cool since you get countless of opportunities to meet them in their world and get to know their tradtions and thoughts, especially since we felt like a lot of Chinese were ready, no, eager to break the language barrier for the opportunity to talk to us "exotic" Europeans. 

For being such a closed country in the past Chinese people are still curious about the world outside of its boarders - especially the people from outside. We got countless compliments and greetings just because people saw we weren't inlanders. People even walked up to us on the street and literally said "We want to be your friend! You are beautiful!"- just because of our origin and look.

That doesn't happen in many places of the world that we've seen so far.

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 DID THIS POST MAKE YOU WANT TO GO THERE? 

WE ARE GLAD TO HELP IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS! 

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