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Zhangjiajie offers a mountain that reaches ‘heaven’s door’
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EZEQUIEL Franco is an Spanish native who has been working in Shanghai for more than five years as a wine consultant. He has traveled from “north to south and east to west” and has been to 250 of China’s 650 cities, along with South America and Europe. He travels about 160 days a year, packing only essential clothes, a good camera and a notebook to jot down his expenses, anecdotes and experiences.
My favorite destination so far is Chile. After traveling for a long time around China, it was nice when I landed in Chile and everybody spoke Spanish, my native language. Chile is also a wine paradise with a lot of diversity and powerful heritage. You can visit Atacama Desert in the north, see the Pacific Ocean along the coast, the Andes Mountains in the east and Antarctic influences in the south.
There’s so much diversity and so much fun in this narrow country with a long coastline of 4,300 kilometers.
My most exciting trip was in Lhasa visiting customers and holding an amazing wine tasting event with more than 400 people. To most foreigners Tibet has always been considered a mysterious place. I couldn’t believe I was there in front of Potala Palace holding an event to promote our wines.
As for an offbeat destination in China, the first one that comes to mind is Zhangjiajie in Hunan Province. The view is breathtaking when I arrived at the top of Tianmen Mountain, meaning Heaven’s Door Mountain, after climbing 999 ladder steps. When taking a cable car up through the clouds to climb the ladders I felt like I was living on Pandora, the planet in “Avatar.” It really surprised me as I’d never heard about Zhangjiajie before.
It takes less than three hours to fly from Shanghai to Zhajiajie. Find a good hotel after arriving and then go straight to the mountainous forest park. Get a ticket to take the thrilling cable-car ride and climb to the top of the mountain to get a bird’s-eye view of the landscape. Next day, take a bus or rent a car to visit Fenghuang Old Town, where a couple of minority groups such as the Miao live.
Don’t forget to pack a good pair of sports shoes because you will likely do a lot of walking. Bring a good camera to capture the exotic minority people in their colorful clothes and accessories.
You can also find a good foot massage parlor to recover after all that hiking up and down Tianmen Mountain.
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