Visit Zhangjiajie – How to Visit Tianmen Mountain

Visit Zhangjiajie – How to Visit Tianmen Mountain

Half way through our China exploration we were in the beautiful town of Zhangjiajie. The city is a true hidden gem in China – not so frequently visited by western tourists. Featuring an array of landscapes from mountains, upland areas and Karst peaks, this is a must visit for a traveler. The main highlight of Zhangjiajie is the famous Tianmen Mountain, however exploring the mountain on your own is very daunting as its hard to answer “How to visit Tianmen Mountain”  because of the lack of information and also because the guided tours being quite expensive. Located over 490 acres, the rare mountain top scenery features mountain tablelands clothed with lush green vegetation making it the world’s most beautiful Sky garden.

 The First tip is stay in a hotel close to the main railway station in Zhangjiajie. We arrived in Zhangjiajie the night before, arriving from Shanghai and checked into a hotel right next to the main bus station. The Tianmen ticket office is just 1 KM away so it’s an easy walk.

The Second tip is to load up on snacks and hydration. Stuff uphill is quite expensive and also has long queues. So rather than waste time and money – it’s better to carry eatables, water etc. from downhill.

The Third tip is to start early. The Ticket office opens up 7:30AM in summer and 8AM in winter. There are quite long queues to take the cableway. So, preferably start early to avoid the crowds uphill and get some of the best views. Plan to reach at least 30 mins before the start time as sometimes they do allow people earlier than the start time.

A quick breakfast and we were on our way to the cable station. One can see the cable cars hovering over your heads from anywhere in the town. So just follow these cable lines and you would soon arrive at the cable way ticket office.

Now head to the west end of the ticket office – you could see hoards of people and tour groups lining up. We were approached by a guide at this point which we had to politely decline as we wanted to explore the mountain on our own terms. There are quite few routes/ticket options.

The fourth tip is Opt for the “A Tour”. This allows you to take the cable car uphill and come down using the escalators/bus.  The cost is 261 Yuan/per person – all worth it.

Once you buy the ticket, follow the lines and make you way through the security checks (keep you passport handy) and finally you get to board the cable way. Usually there are up to 8 people in the cable car. This point is called the down cable car station.

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The Tianmen mountain cableway is the world’s longest cableway. The aerial tramway ride is approx. 7kms and takes over 30mins. As it starts leaving the downtown of Zhangjiajie, the scenery starts to unfold – lush green mountain peaks, the 99 Bends (99 sharp curves on a road up to the mountain peak), and deep valleys. There is nothing much one can do while in the cable car other than absorb the sceneries and gaze at the engineering marvel.

Our hope soon turned into despair as we entered a thick blanket of fog which obscured everything in the near view! Everything above and below us was no longer visible. Soon we reach the middle cable car station – do not get down here. The cable way then does a steep ascend to the final upper cable car station. Alight here and reach a reception hall where you could pick up a tourist map of various walking routes to the top of the mountain.

There are 2 paths here – one heading straight – Don’t take that. Instead take the one to the left and select the Red (west) line. All the signboards on the summit are in English and from here on life gets easy to follow directions. If you have done everything right till now then on taking the left you will soon be crossing the cable car path from beneath. Now continue on the west line and stick to taking the right turns to enter the Cliff Hanging Walkway.

Build on the edge of the mountain summit and clinging to the steep vertical cliffs the walkway is 1.7KM long. At the end of the walkway there is a hanging bridge which links two vertical peaks. Again try avoiding the crowds here by being early. Though the sceneries underneath were obscure due to the fog it did give us a feel of the sheer scale of magnificence beneath the vertical drop.

Continue on a brisk walk before arriving at the most famous attraction of the Tianmen Mountain – The Glass walk – “The walk of faith”.  Pay 5 Yuan and take the special shoe covers which is a must buy before setting foot on the glass walk. A sheer thrill which gives a sense of walking in the sky. Definitely not for the faint hearted – we saw many people clinging on to the face of the cliff out of fear. Though the fog did help us, the first few steps especially for Li were quite shaky and then we conquered our fears. This part is usually crowded as tourists cramp for pictures.

A brilliant walk over the clouds. Continue further on the cliff path passing hoards of Chinese tourists posing for pictures. All the intersections are well marked in English and the route has rest and toilet facilities. Cross the Suspension or hanging bridge to soon reach the Tinamen temple. This marks the end of the Red line.

At this point, we decided to take the Open chairlift to the summit. This costs 25 yuan per person. The fog did prove to be damper when it comes to the views but it did give us a feel of floating on the clouds. At the summit, one could get the best possible bird eye views –which we couldn’t!

Now there are a couple of options here – The first is to take the chair car down back to the Tianmen temple (25 Yuan), the second is to do the East (Blue) line semicircle and the third being taking the central blue line down to the trans mountain escalator.

As the fog had quite spoilt our party and also we had plans to visit the Baofeng Lake on the same day, we took the third option of the central line. We walked downhill passing through dense forest foliage before reaching the entrance for the escalator (Upper escalator). Just show the main ticket (Tour A) here and go down a series of 6-7 escalators to reach an intermediate point. Here you need to buy another ticket costing 32 yuan to take another 4-5 escalators (lower escalator) to reach the Tianmen cave square.

Tianmen Cave (‘Heaven’s Door’) is a large (30 meters or 100 feet wide) water-eroded hole between two peaks, like a huge doorway in the cliff face. It’s the highest hole of its sort in the world. There are 999 steep and narrow steps up to the cave — “the Stairway to Heaven”. The views from the cave are supposedly quite plain, and it is always crowded. We decided against taking this 30 mins hike to knock on heaven’s door – anyways guess the heavens doors are long closed for us. 

The World Wingsuit League held the first and second World Wingsuit Championships at Tianmen Mountain, flying through Tianmen Cave! There are special mountain buses which leave downhill from here. Show the main ticket and board one of these buses which ply constantly. Soon we were zig zagging our way through the 99 bends – feeling a little giddy along the way. The bus eventually stops at the foothill where you need to now shift to a city bus for the rest of your way down (God knows why!).

The city bus then drops you at the main ticket office from where you started the journey. We had started the journey early in the day at approx. 7AM and we were finished by around 1PM. S0 this gave us ample time to explore more of Zhangjiajie for the rest of the day visiting the famous Baofeng Lake.

If you have any questions around this please feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you at the very earliest.