Jiuzhaigou National Park

25th May 2014         8-16’C rainy      0km on bike
Jiuzhaigou National Park

I spent a cold rainy day today exploring the stunning Jiuzhaigou National Park.   Jiuzhaigou may be the most well known national park in China, with over 2.5M visitors per year, there are a crazy number of people to deal with in order to see the features of the park.  Militant aunties wielding umbrellas and iPads as weapons, pushing, shoving and yelling are all part of the experience, as everyone jostles to get the best photo or stand in the optimal position to view the sights.  In the beginning I struggled to adjust to the level of aggressiveness, but it didn’t take me too long to realise that “when in Rome” or in this case, when in China, you have to play by the local rules or you just get pummelled or trampled to death.

Accessing the park means using a shuttle bus to move around the park (more scrums) and then walking along boardwalk trails. Fortunately it was possible to get away from the mad crowds on the less visited trails and enjoy the serenity and peace of the forest.

The lakes and waterfalls of Jiuzhaigou are crystal clear and a great deal of effort goes into keeping the park pristine, I’ve no doubt this is a real challenge in China, and I noticed other tourists throwing their food scraps into the forest, and forest workers coming through and cleaning the mess up quickly.

Despite the crowds and the buses, Jiuzhaigou is a natural wonder and spectularly beautiful and I enjoyed seeing yet another side of China I never knew existed until now.