Jiuzhaigou

 During September holiday, we visited Chengdu, and Jiuzhaigou huang long area.

Travel from Chengdu to Jiuzhaihuanglong

It is very easy to get highspeed train from Chengdu to Huanglongjiuzhai, takes about 2 hours.  The highspeed train is nowhere to compare Japan's shinkansen, but it shows great improvement for China.

Be prepared for some long queue and pushy crowded, otherwise, the journey is quite pleasant.

From Train station to Jiuzhaigou

Our trip plan was to first visit Jiuzhao Valley, then to Huanglong.  The two places is located in different town.  Huanglong is nearer to train station then Jiuzhai.  

From train station, you can take bus or taxi.  To avoid the local crowd, we took the taxi to our hotel, which costed about RMB260.  Later we decided to hire the driver for 3 days, total in RMB 1,200.

Our hotel is Hilton Jiuzhaigou, is next to a newly built resort.  As always, the room and environment are very nice.

Hilton Jiuzhai Gou

The second day, we went to Jiuzhaigou National Park.

It was very crowed, the in park tourist bus are very frequent, so I didn't understand why people were so pushy and rowdy, the bus took us the very top of tourist points, 3500 above sea-level, from there, we walked down to visit a few attractions.

It was not possible to finish all the attractions in one day, so here are a few highlights:

There are many similar sceneries like these, thanks for the good weather, we could see many fantastic views.

The most impressive part was Panda waterfall, no panda though, the waterfall area was cooling and charming.

One thing I felt annoyed, many people put their hands into the water, despite the sign of "No playing water"

We walked a few stops to reach some points, then decided to take bus to another side of park.

The views are no doubt beautiful, but there were just too crowded, and some sitting at roadside eating, the air filled with spicy food aroma; though the whole park is non smoking park, some people hide in the cave smoking.

For serious hikers, you might now find it satisfying, as all the path paved with wooden block, too easy to walk, conversably, rob away the natural charm of Jiuzhaigou valley.

I would rather go there in a quiet season, hiking by myself without taking tourist buses.