Tianmen Mountain

At the heart of a national park of its own, Tianmen Mountain is one of Zhangjiajie’s most popular sights. You can reach the summit via a 7.5-kilometre cable car, one of the world’s longest, or via a 99-loop road (a sight which can be enjoyed from the cable car as you soar above it) where, weather dependant of course, you’ll get spectacular views over sheer cliffs and plunging karst valleys. At the summit is the renowned ‘heaven’s door’, a towering natural archway often swathed in mist, which itself is reached by a 999 (spotting a pattern here? 9 is a auspicious number in China) steps, naturally nicknamed the ‘stairway to heaven’.

At the summit of Tianmen Mountain you’ll also find Tianmenshan, a temple set in landscaped gardens. Originally built during the Tang Dynasty, the temple today was built in 1949 in the Tang style and still boasts a tranquil atmosphere and a welcome break from the other adrenaline inducing activities found here. One of these is the thrilling cliff-hanging walkways which are not for the faint-hearted! These pathways are suspended 1,400 metres up Tianmen’s sheer cliffs and often have glass bottoms – for those who venture onto them, the views are staggering.