Reaching Chengdu meant finishing the last large part of cycling in China with our visa running out and us still wanting to visit my (Jonas') friend Alex at his home in Yueyang, Hunan, China. We did not see each other since I had been in Groningen, Netherlands, last after finishing my Masters and we had to take the chance to catch up with him if Alex is even home at his parents' place in China. From Chengdu we got on our first overnight train for this trip which got us straight to Yueyang where Alex picked us up from the station. During our time in his home town we explored some of the few local sights like Yueyang Tower or the big lake in the city, but most of the time we spent eating amazing Chinese food in his mom's new restaurant or some other place and talking about anything and everything. The last three years changed him a lot, but we also realised that this trip leaves some marks on us (hopefully for the better :-D).

With not that many things to do in Yueyang, we decided to visit Zhangjiajie National Park nearby. It is also known as the "Avatar Mountains" as they supposedly inspired the steep floating mountain pillars in the movie Avatar where the Na'vi fly their tamed dragons. In the morning we walked to the entrance of the park and the swarm of Chinese tourist groups was overwhelming. Luckily we were planning on walking some hiking paths to get away from the masses and to avoid spending even more money on some overpriced cable cars that are not included in the park admission. Once we got off the bus at the start off our trail and we walked for ten minutes, we found ourselves in the middle of the forest with nobody else around - nice! The hike to the top of the mountain was not too hard and the view we got there was worth the effort. It is hard to describe the amazing scenery of these hundreds of free-standing rock pillars, some of the more than 100m tall. This place is just stunning and now we understand why it is one of the most (if not the most) popular national parks in China. On our second day in the park we were a bit unlucky with the weather. The clouds were hanging very low and ascending another mountain in the park just meant hiking up into a cloud. Visibility was about 15m, but at least we had amazing weather the day before.

Then it was time to say good-bye to Alex and we got on our train to get back to Chengdu. Unfortunately there were no sleeper tickets left, so we had to sit in the overnight train and were a bit done with once we arrived back in Chengdu. Our last thing to do in Chengdu was visiting the Giant Panda Park which is famous in the area. There they breed Pandas to release them back into the wild at some point, because wild Pandas are threatened by habitat destruction and human development. These fluffy giants were really cute, but just watch the video and see it for yourself. Words don't do them justice.

The last thing for us to do now is to get to the border of China and Kazakhstan, but that is for another time. ;-)

Cheers from China,
Vroni, Droni and Joni