Jiuzhaigou National Park

The route we drive is beautiful; deep valleys, mountain passes, agricultural land covered with plastic, swirling rivers and small villages. You feel the temperature drop in the bus as you see the amount of trees are declining and the snow increases. Panoramas with snowy peaks and now almost Tibetan houses with the bright colors red, yellow, white and gray.

The road workers look more and more "oriental" and mainly consist of women! It’s starting to get dark when we arrive in Jiuzhaigou valley and I quickly get out of the bus to walk to the trunk to get my bag out and look for a hostel. Scattered in the Jiuzhaigou valley are nine villages, which give the name to the area (Jiuzhaigou means "nine villages valley"). With a lot of dust on top of my bag on my back I walk past the expensive hotels towards the entrance of the park where there should be a few affordable hostels. A boy comes to me with a calculator that has 50 on the display. Assuming this is the price, I also want to know what kind of room it is and he writes on a piece of paper "standard". It’s probably a new hostel which is always good because they need the money and customers who can tell other people about it.  

The village looks "Tibetan" with all balconies, bright colors and colored drawings on the walls. The remote area was inhabited by Tibetans and Qiang for centuries. It was not until 1972 that the area was officially “discovered” by the government and wood was cut down on a large scale. This stopped in 1979 when the Chinese government banned this and designated the area in 1982 as a national park. I walk behind the boy into a luxury room and expect that he wants to show this at a higher price and then say that he also has rooms of 50Y but this is omitted.

Do I get all this for converted for 5 euros? When the boy hands the key I go looking for defects (no hot water for example) because this is too good to be true but find nothing and enjoy the evening of my super-deluxe room though it is cold because of the lack of a heater. So maybe that was the reason why the price was low. 

Early in the morning I walk to the entrance of the park where it is already quite busy. Because I am asked if I also want to buy a bus ticket for the park, I ask how this works but then she turns quite; probalby she’s taught to tell me what my options are in English, but when I start to ask questions it turns out that was all her English unfortunately. Luckily a Chinese man is standing behind me and picks up our conversation.

He explains to me the park is too big to see on foot and says that buses constantly drive back and forth and you can step in and out everywhere to see the highlights. I thank him and buy a ticket including a busticket. Then I take the bus all the way to the other side of the park and then take a mix of walk and bus back to the entrance.

The "Bamboo" stop is my first real stop and here I see why they call this the fairytale forest; the water is crystal clear and it appears that trees and plants simply grow further but then under water - certain minerals seem to be the cause of that unique appearance. Besides the lakes, the panorama is beautiful with snowy mountain peaks, autumnal colors in the trees and lots of pine forest. Also here seem to be panda, takin's and the golden monkeys live.  

In order to avoid the big crowds a bit and to see as much as possible “live”, I try to walk as much as possible over the wooden ramps that act as footpaths between the lakes. The next lake is perhaps even more impressive than the first one I saw since the water here has a decent current because of the waterfalls. Beautiful flowers with amazing colours complete this wonderful park. The "five-color lake" betrays that it has more different colors, but with this lake even the human eye has difficulty distinguishing what is visible above and below water.

Annoying are the multitudes of Chinese who all want to have their picture taken one by one, some completely in traditional clothes and block the most views. 

Jiuzhaigou NP: 

By means of bus and on foot I zigzag the entire park until I arrive at Zechawazhai, a small Tibetan settlement in the middle of all those lakes and beautiful nature. I'm not the only one who got the idea to have lunch here and I see the only "white" tour group sitting around the picnic tables.

The rest of the tourist is Chinese which is not so strange – before I came here I never heard nobody at this place. I didn’t know it was existing. Next to that it’s very far from everything in China. This place is very pricey to eat and crowded and despite the fact that it looks great with dozens of Tibetan flags, I’m going elsewhere to eat something.  

After a long day strolling through the park, I decide to go back and arrange a bus ticket for tomorrow, and that is a good thing; there is a bus going to Songpan! It is cold in my room so I decide to "eat out" and end up in a small restaurant where a group of Chinese people shuffle, spitting, smacking and gurgling behind a big bowl of noodles. Then I swam through the only street of the village back to my cold loft and read some under the warm blankets before I turn off the light.