Day 20 Tianmen Mountain, train journey to Shanghai

We set off early, pack, have breakfast and meet Mr Hu and Alex at 7.30am. At the bakery around the corner, you'll recognise us, we get a coffee and some food for later on the train. Today's destination is Tianmen Mountain, just eight kilometres south of the village of Zhangjiajie. The Tianmen Mountain Nature Reserve has been designated the second national forest park in Zhangjiajie. With an altitude of almost 1,520 metres, Tianmen (Heaven's Gate) is the highest peak in Zhangjiajie and is often referred to as the „soul” of the region. The mountain is adorned with graceful trees, karst hills and a variety of medicinal herbs and plants. Tianmen also boasts its „four wonders”, which include the Tianmen Mountain Railway, Tongtian Dadao (the Road to Heaven), Tianmen Cave and the Bonsai Garden in the Air. It wasn't enough for the bonsai garden.

After an hour's drive we can already see the hole in the mountain, the Tianmen Cave. Yeeeaaahhhh cable car ride 4 km or 15 minutes. Unfortunately, the weather was again poor. But fortunately no fog at our altitude, just a bit of rain. The cable car starts in the middle of the city.

The 99 steep bends on the bus are a bit of a challenge even for experienced Swiss stomachs, but the driver is merciful and drives decently.

Once we reach the top, we can already see the 999 steps, it's a shame that time is so short today, now we have to take the escalators - there are 5 escalators to the big hole. On the way we are shown pictures of activities on the mountain, racers, paragliders, tightrope walkers, wingsuiters and all the other things that can be seen on the mountain.

No, they are not always the same pictures, there are 12 such escalators all the way to the top.

And yes, we weren't quite the only ones who wanted to enjoy the view. After all, it was only the stopover, there are now another 7 escalators ahead of us.

We also take a short but exciting walk along the Tianmenshan Glass Skywalk.

Now we need to talk about organising a lot of people in one place. They can do that here, everything is perfectly organised with waiting rooms, mutton aisles, your passport is scanned once together with your ticket, from then on the system knows you. There are always short bus journeys to the next station. They are used to it - there are around 6 million visitors a year.

Now it's time to set off, we drive to Zhangjiajie railway station, where we take the train to Shanghai (14:38-21:57), a distance of almost 1350 km, which we cover in just over 7 hours.

The driver comes running and takes us to the hotel in the city centre. We get an upgrade to a higher room class with a round bathtub in the middle of the room, well, who needs it?.