Jiuzhaigou & Huanglong national park

Wow – what a mad and stunning place! Made the bus journey and numb bum worth every minute. Hidden in the mountains and around 400km (yep only 400km and it took 14 hours!) north of Chengdu are 2 of China’s best national parks. These stunning natural area’s are totally surreal – we first explored the park of Jiuzhaigou with it’s plethera of coloured lakes and stunning mountain backdrops, each pool was deeply coloured and amazing! Green, blue and turquoise water like you’ve never seen before just rolls down a valley each little lake connecting to the next with streams and waterfalls! We explored for hours before the inevitable afternoon rains hit. The following day it was off on another bumpy bus ride of 4 hours over to the smaller but equally stunning Huanglong park. A cable car ride takes you up to around 3,500 meters and then it’s a 7km stroll back down the mountain following the fall of glacier water as its caught in natural calcium formed pools and shimmers turquoise in the light! This was one cool little side trip. We left the park on a bus bound for Jiuzhaigou but wanted to get to a town called Songpan, which would save us a few hours on the bus the following day – somehow with a bit of help from a guy on the bus and lots of pointing, looking blankly at one another and laughing the conductor managed to get us dropped off on a main road then she arranged a lift with a local for us to get to Songpan…was very amusing and thankfully we arrived where we wanted to be! Only problem was when we arrived there was no running water or electricity in town as a landslide had wiped out the supply!