We caught an overnight train from the cavernous Guangzhou railway station, arriving in Zhangjiajie in Hunan province at around 10am the following morning. We had shared a four-berth cabin with a pleasant younger couple who were keen to talk about the how, where and costs of tertiary education in Australia, obviously with their teenage son in mind. We had talked for a long time and eventually we both looked forward to a good night's sleep. The signs were all good – the beds were clean and comfortable, the cabin air conditioning was effective and our companions were very pleasant. But we soon discovered that the man was a heavy duty snorer who proceeded to do stunningly realistic chainsaw imitations for the rest of the night. In the morning the wife apologized for her husband's loud snoring and she hoped it hadn't disturbed us too much. We politely replied that we had slept like logs and had only heard him a couple of times. This was a bare-faced lie. We'd hardly slept a wink, and as the night passed excruciatingly slowly, I coped by entertaining increasingly violent fantasies about how Mr Chainsaw could be silenced. I thought about thrusting a metre-long steel skewer up through the bed above me. But there were no skewers to be had. A more realistic option would have been to break off the wooden rod attached to the bed support, and use it to deliver a hard whack to the unsuspecting man's temple that would have made a Canadian seal clubber proud. He would never have known what hit him – he was a good man and he didn't deserve to suffer. But he had to go.
On our arrival at the Zhangjiajie city railway station we bleary-eyedly found the correct minibus to take us to our intended destination of Zhangjiajie Village in the Wulingyuan foothills about one hour away. But our trip in this vehicle was quickly cut short. Barely five minutes after we set off, the driver stopped in the middle of the street to talk with the driver of another van. He then ordered us off his van, telling us to go with the other. Evidently, as we were his only two passengers, he considered it not worth proceeding. That didn't seem too unreasonable to us, so we politely left and squeezed onto the other minibus that was full, and we were soon on our way again. But then we discovered that this bus wasn't going to Zhangjiajie Village at all. Not to worry, the driver assured us – he would drop us off “at the turnoff”. Further questioning revealed that this “turnoff” was several kilometres from our destination, so it was time to dig our heels in. The driver momentarily relented, agreeing to take us there. In mandarin he announced to his passengers that he would take these two foreigners to the village but as that would delay everyone else by half an hour, he would charge them (us) a high price. This provoked an immediate storm of protest from our fellow passengers who weren't going to tolerate such a delay and who in any case would not share in the spoils of the higher price the driver was planning to charge us two trouble-makers. Then Lee Tuan had a good idea – she suggested to the driver that he telephone the hotel where we planned to stay and ask them if they would send a car to pick us up at the turn-off. The driver made the call, and after a lot of convincing, the hotel owner agreed. The remainder of the trip was uneventful by comparison, and around lunch-time we wearily booked into our hotel.
Zhangjiajie and the surrounding Wulingyuan scenic area is a very beautiful world heritage listed nature reserve and, according to our travel guide book, a great place for hiking. In this area there are around 250 peaks and 3,000 quartz-sandstone spires rising above the subtropical forest. Over the next couple of days we did a lot of walking, including going up and down several thousand steps. This was supplemented by two cable car rides and a ride down the Bailong elevator, a lift that plunges down the sheer face of a high cliff that separates two sections of the park. By the third day we had maxed out on great scenery, and in any case we could walk no further. Our legs had never been so sore and it was all we could do to hobble up the steps to the railway station to catch our next train.
