Life is stranger than fiction. 

In fact, without James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar, the 2009 phenomenon that set the world record for the highest-grossing movie of all time, at the back of my head, I would have thought of the Wulingyuan landscape as out of this world.

I’m not surprised that such a gravity-defying landscape, rocks rising out of the abyss, as if being lifted by some unforeseen forces, would provide Cameron the inspiration for worldmaking. In Avatar, he conjured up the moon called Pandora covered densely in primeval forests and floating mountains, a world so fantastical there was no way it could exist on earth.

But it does. Didn’t I say life is stranger than fiction?

In fact, the Wulingyuan Scenic and Historic Interest Area, as otherworldly as it is, isn’t even that far away. From Manila, I only needed to take a plane to the southern tip of China, only two hours and 40 minutes away via Cebu Pacific’s thrice-a-week flight to Guangzhou and from Guangzhou, where I stayed overnight, Zhangjaijie, where Wulingyuan is, this wonder world, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is only 100 minutes away by plane.

Wulingyuan, all of 26 hectares on the northwestern border of Hunan Province, houses many parks, and the Zhangjaijie National Forest Park, the first ever national park in China, is one of them. Over a land area of 360 square kilometers, it features more than 3,000 pillars of quartzite sandstone rising from the deep valleys as high as 1,080 meters into the sky. The highest, as you would have guessed, would be the South Sky Pillar, which has since 2009, to ride on the popularity of Cameron’s 3D movie, been renamed Hallelujah Avatar Mountain. This and the bulk of the Wulingyuan’s sandstone pillars, are best seen from a viewing area called Yuanjiajie, accessible from the Zhangjaijie National Forest Park main entrance via the Bailong Elevator, itself an incredible experience. The two-deck glass elevator, built onto the side of a 326-meter-high cliff, holds the Guinness World Record for being the tallest outdoor elevator.

The skinny Avatar mountains, narrow at the base and wider at the top, like baseball bats, are towering feats of nature, formed as far back as 400 million years ago, during the Age of the Fishes, the Devonian Period of the Paleozoic Era, from a combination of tectonic uplift or the irregular rising and falling of the earth’s crust and water erosion. Throughout the year, they are either shrouded in mist, which adds to their mystical, transcendental appeal, or they would appear as if protruding from a sea of clouds, which gives the impression that heaven has fallen upon them. At certain times of the day, the fogs surrounding the peaks reflect the brightening glow of daybreak or the darkening colors of dusk.

Also, many of the sandstone pillars are in such majestic shapes mimicking nature that some of them have been given such poetic, philosophical names as the “Peacock Spreading its Tail,” “Two Tortoises Strolling in Heaven,” “Pigsy Looking in the Mirror,” and “Old Man Collecting Herbs.”

On each pillar, on its sides or on its peak or its crevices, grow patches of forest lush with Wuling pine trees, which display odd shapes, dove trees, white berry yews, Chinese chestnut, cathedral bells, and tangerines, with which animal species like rhesus macaques, pangolins, giant salamanders, and rare birds like horned and golden pheasants, monkey-faced eagles, and Chinese nightingales form an eco-system that, as scientific evidence shows, “has never undergone dramatic weather changes, water loss and soil erosion, rock collapse, or pest attack for the past thousands of years.” 

There are many things to do in Wulingyuan, including camping, hiking, a tour of its many caves, or even boat trips, as in the valleys run rivers, streams, and creeks. There are lakes and ponds that are just as fairy tale-like as the Avatar Mountains. But I only had a few days in Zhangjaijie, where I went as a special guest of Travel Warehouse Inc., which organized the trip with the support of UOS Travel, a Chinese-run business-to-business tour operator and wholesaler based in Manila, and Cebu Pacific. 

Although it is small, only 9,653 square kilometers, no more than one percent of the entirety of China, Zhangjaijie is a wonderland of many adventures other than the Avatar Mountains. Nearby is the Tianmen Mountain, Zhangjaijie’s highest mountain at 1,518 meters above sea level, and its Gateway to the Sky, as well the the Zhangjaijie Grand Canyon Glass Bridge, the world’s longest at 380 meters (and six meters wide) and the tallest at 300 meters above the canyon when it opened in 2016, but I believe these two highlights of my Zhangjaijie adventures, the Avatar Mountains hike included, deserve stories of their own on another day.

Meanwhile, I have yet to recover my breath. I think it still lingers there, wrapped around a sandstone peak like a mist or a cloud jealously keeping it from the view of the tourists on Yuanjiajie. Claim it back for me when you book a trip at +632 8687 2492. www.twi.com.ph