Hole-in-the-mountain Tianmen

Ascending Tianmen

Today is our first day exploring the mountains in this part of China, starting with Tianmen.  The hotel advised that if it isn’t busy, one can normally turn up for the cable car before the timeslot that has been booked.

We grabbed a disappointing breakfast around 0645 a couple of doors away from the hotel.  Not by chance, it was only a short walk to the cable car station.  We were there at 0745 when it was quiet, even though we had booked for 0900-1000.

The cable car ride took 25 mins and is claimed to be the longest pasenger cableway of mountains in the world.  It has a length of 7.5 km and ascends 1.3 km, with the steepest part at 37 deg.

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Exploring Tianmen

At the top of the ride, we ended up indoors where we looked at some maps and sought some information about the various routes.

It was only CNY200 for a guide for about 4h and split five-ways, it was a cheap way of ensuring that we saw everything in the most efficient way.

We started on foot around 0830 heading towards the west where we encountered some plankwalks and our first glass plankwalk at a small fee (more for hiring the cloth booties to minimise scratching to the glass).

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The route took us to a temple in the interior of the monolith.  From there we continued to the east peak area where we caught a glimpse of Tianmen’s hole in the mountain.  The area also offered a good view of the hairpin turns on the road down.

We finished our walk around 1230 and said goodbye to the guide.  We explored the surrouding area for more viewpoints, in particular Tianmen’s iconic hole and stairs.

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We then grabbed a simple Chinese meal, despite having initially deciding on Burger King.  Thereafter, we treated ourselves to an ice cream before starting our descent.

Descending Tianmen

Our descent from Tianmen started with rides on seven long segments of escalators housed in tunnels dug into the mountain core.

While some countries struggle to build critical infrastructure like bridges and roads, here in China they build things like this for tourism and entertainment!

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The escalators delivered us near to the hole in the mountain where there was an option to pay for the remaining five escalators or take the 999 steps down.  We opted for the free and iconic route, taking our time with lots of photos en route.

During the planning phase, we understood there was a bus option for the descent on the windy hairpin road, instead of the shorter cable car ride.  However, the bus isn’t an option while the road was being worked on.

The cable car took us down to a station out of town where we then transferred to a shuttle bus to where we started this morning, outside the city cable car station (which was the longer cableway).

 

Last minute travel bookings

Back at around 1600 I had hoped to rest.  But Kim had messaged from through the day and was interested in joining the trip, having first declined the invitation.

He had some car events on but a key one had been cancelled.  So, I spent the afternoon making his travel arrangements which comprised flights, hotels, a train and entrance tickets.

His short flight from Hong Kong to Wuhan cost more than my intercontinental flight from Auckland to Wuhan.

72 Wonders Tower

In the evening, I went out with E & BW for dinner near the 72 Wonder Towers, a paid tourist trap comprising of dining and performances.  We took a car there but didn’t pay to go in. We ate near it and also took some snacks across the road.

The stunning building takes elements of the stilted Tujia architecture but is supposedly an empty shell.