After spending a brief evening in Shanghai, I embarked on a 24 hour overnight train to Zhangjiajie, Hunan: home of the “Avatar Mountains”. If you’ve seen the movie Avatar (the one with the blue aliens, not the air bending child), you may remember the “floating mountains”. These mountains are huge column peaks that float in a magnetic field. Why are the Zhangjiajie mountains now dubbed the “Avatar Mountains”? James Cameron actually got the idea of the floating mountains in Avatar from the Zhangjiajie mountains in Hunan. On a perfect day the clouds will drift through the column peaks making the mountains appear as if they are floating!
Zhangjiajie has always been on my bucket list, just check out this post I wrote before studying abroad winter of 2012! After seeing the Ice Festival in Harbin this winter, Zhangjiajie was the last place in mainland China I really wanted to visit. I guess after over a year and a half of living in China I’ve pretty much been EVERYWHERE.
To read the rest of this article by: Richelle at Adventures Around Asia, please click here