Tom's visit 2015 Part 5: TianMen Mountain (moved from old blog)

 The Return of the Brother: TianMen Mountain

TianMen Mountain (Heaven's gate) was the highlight of the trip for me. Although ZhangJiaJie is beautiful I still think I liked TianMen better. The scenery is completely different and its more about the platform walk and the eventual steps that combined to make this mountain my favourite. 
By now we are on our 4th day of 6 am alarms and our third of all day walking, needless to say the swearing was at an all time high with the sounding of the alarm. Luckily for us, it was pouring down when we woke up. It took us all of about ten seconds to decide mountain climbing in this weather was a really stupid idea and we immediately went back to sleep. The weather cleared up around 9 am so we went about the horrid task of getting up and heading to the cable car station. Little did we know that Rocky, the amazing man that he is, knew we were going to TianMen and booked us tickets online the night before to save us some money. 


don't drop the hammer!

The cable car claims to be the longest in the world, something I have heard in China before, but at over 7 km it may well be. (I googled the worlds longest cable car and still cant say for certain, all I can say is it is in the top 5.) The cable car starts on the far side of the city to the mountain (city in this case meaning train and bus station plus a road of restaurants and shops) and then goes up to the top very quickly. At a whopping 30 minutes we had plenty of time to sit and watch the looming mountain draw closer and closer. We were also lucky in that the cable car goes over the 99 bend road. We drove back down this road later on but we didn't count the bends, we were too busy clinging to the seat in front as Evil Kenevil drove us to the half way cable car point. 

glass walkway, (google image) it was much busier 
when we were there.

Once at the top there is a beautiful walkway clinging to the side of the cliff that circles the whole top of the mountain. Again google can into play as i was intrigued as to how that pathway was constructed. The pictures I found made my stomach churn so I added them here to make your too. The pathway is open to the elements and has only a waist high handrail to stop you plummeting the 1400 meters to the rocky base of the mountain. We were lucky in that the path in general was not too crowded as we could walk at a decent pace without having to push or be pushed. We encountered crowds just before the glass walkway (my main reason for coming) when buying the 5RMB ticket to get on to the path. Here there was lots of pushing, shouting and general chaos all being ignored by the guy whose job it was to keep order. 
Unfortunately the clouds had rolled in again and we couldn't see the bottom when on the path, which is probably just as well as I think Tom might have had a heart attack. Most of the people on the path were screaming and clinging to each other, so we shuffled off fairly quickly and carried on round the path. The path was pretty much the only route we could take so getting lost wasn't much of an issue, there were only a few times when it split and here our little map was more use than any of the signs. About a two hour walk later we got to the top of the escalators, which is the start of the last part of the mountain tour. The escalators were split into 6 smaller ones, each about 100 meters in length, all underground. We had no idea where we were going or how much further we had to travel, every time we thought we were getting close another escalator appeared. 

journey to the center.....

Eventually we were spat out of the earth at the base of the large hole in the mountain, or the gate/door as it is known. I had read stories of the Russian Air force flying through the door as well as the Squirrel wing suit man (name unknown sorry) and having been there I am more convinced than ever that they are insane. Sure its a fairly large hole in a mountain but I still would not even think of flying through it!


.....of the earth

 The base of the door is at the top of the 999 steps (apparently this particular mountain likes 9s) which thankfully we did not have to walk up. At this point in the trip I think both of us would have died or at least our legs would have. the view of the surrounding area from the top was impressive, but the main attraction was the mountain itself. standing in the middle was actually not a great vantage point so we trooped down the steps (without falling) and got much better pictures from the bottom looking up. 

base of the steps

At the base of the steps and the top of the 99 bend road is a little seating area with some terrible food. We sat and ate for a bit then boarded the bus. As i mentioned earlier, our journey on the bendy road was not at all comfortable or enjoyable and luckily was not the whole way back. they drop you off at the half way point of the cable car and that takes you back to the start. 
TianMen held one of the top spots on my bucket list so I am thrilled to have finally made it. It was the highlight of my trip, even considering ZhangJiaJie and YangShuo, both beautiful but just different. I cannot recommend it enough!


We had a slight train ticket mishap in that we couldn't get any, so a flight was booked and we swapped our 18 hour train for a 2 hour
plane. Next stop HangZhou

we made it!