5-Day Zhangjiajie Private Tour: Forest Park, Tianmen Mountain, Glass Bridge & Furong Town

Five days is the length that lets you see Zhangjiajie without skimming it or racing it: the three places people fly here for — the sandstone pillars of the Forest Park, Tianmen Mountain and the glass bridge over the Grand Canyon — plus one day in a town that has nothing to do with any of them. If you are looking for a 5-day Zhangjiajie itinerary, this is ours, written out honestly, day by day, including where you sleep and why each day sits where it does.

Day	Where you go	Sleep
Day 1	Airport or station pickup. Nothing else scheduled.	Wulingyuan
Day 2	Furong Town, then the 72 Qilou towers after dark	Wulingyuan
Day 3	Forest Park: Yuanjiajie, Tianzi Mountain, Ten-Mile Gallery	Wulingyuan
Day 4	Tianmen Mountain: glass skywalk, Tianmen Cave, 99 bends	Wulingyuan
Day 5	Grand Canyon glass bridge, then straight to your flight	—

Day 1 — Arrive, and settle in the one room you will unpack in

Sleep in Wulingyuan.

You are met at Hehua Airport, Zhangjiajie West or the ordinary railway station, at whatever hour you land. That pickup runs through the night and through the early morning, and it is inside the price rather than a separate line on the invoice.

From there we drive straight to Wulingyuan rather than into Zhangjiajie city, and this is a decision rather than a convenience. Wulingyuan is the town beside the Forest Park gate. Base yourself in the city instead and you put roughly an hour of driving at the start and end of every park day, which across this itinerary adds up to most of a day of your holiday spent sitting in a car.

The guide meets you either at the hotel that evening or in the morning, whichever suits your landing time. Nothing else is planned. If you arrived rested and want something to do, the riverside part of the town is a straightforward walk and there is plenty of Hunan food within a few hundred metres of most hotels.

Day 2 — Furong Town, and a tower with a record on it

Sleep in Wulingyuan.

This is the longest day of the trip and it is better to say so now: Furong Town is about eighty kilometres and roughly an hour and three quarters each way, so you will spend something like three and a half hours in the car. It is the only day like that. We put it second, while you are still fresh, it involves almost no climbing, and it is the day guests most often tell us afterwards was the surprise.

Furong Town sits on the Youshui River with Tujia wooden houses built out over a waterfall, which is why Chinese travellers call it the thousand-year-old town hanging on a waterfall. It was called Wangcun until 1986, when the film Hibiscus Town was shot there; the film was popular enough that the town took its name. What you walk is around two and a half kilometres of worn bluestone — the Five-Li Flagstone Street — past shopfronts with timber shutters and stilt houses stacked up the slope. Tujia families still live and work along it, and it has not been turned into a museum of itself.

If three and a half hours of road sounds like more than you came for, there is another way to do it. The high-speed line from Zhangjiajie West to Furong Town station takes about twenty minutes, and a shuttle runs the last ten minutes into the old town. We can build the day around that instead, or take Furong Town out altogether and have a shorter second day.

Back in Zhangjiajie for the evening, and after dark is the right time for the 72 Qilou complex. It is a 109.9-metre building in the form of a Tujia stilt house, recognised by Guinness World Records in 2019 as the tallest building of that kind in the world, with a hollow arch thirty-eight metres high cut clean through the middle of it. Once it is dark the whole facade becomes a light show, and later in the evening there is a bonfire in the square with Tujia dancing that visitors get pulled into. It is somewhere to eat and look, not somewhere to learn anything. If you would rather have a quiet dinner after the drive, nobody minds in the slightest.

Day 3 — The Avatar mountains, a lift inside a cliff, and the valley from underneath

Sleep in Wulingyuan.

This is the reason people fly here, and we start early. The park gates open at seven and every queue in Zhangjiajie forms at the lifts rather than on the paths.

The Bailong Elevator carries you up the inside of a sandstone cliff to Yuanjiajie, the collection of pillars that became the floating Hallelujah Mountains in Avatar. Allow about two hours up there and do not hurry it: the viewpoint closest to the car park is always the busiest, and ten minutes further along the boardwalk the crowd thins out considerably.

Then the park’s own shuttle buses to Tianzi Mountain: Helong Park, named after Marshal He Long, who was from this corner of Hunan; the Imperial Writing Brush Peaks; the Immortal Maiden Offering Flowers; the West Sea Stone Forest; and Stone Boat Sailing the Sea. There is a line visitors quote about it — that whoever has seen the face of Tianzi Mountain does not look at another mountain afterwards — and standing up there it stops sounding like marketing.

The Tianzi Mountain cable car comes down into the valley, and after it comes Ten-Mile Gallery: flat, along the floor of the ravine, looking up at the pillars from below. It is about five kilometres of boardwalk. A small open-sided train runs most of its length if anyone’s feet have had enough; that one is an extra you pay for at the machine, and it is nobody’s fault if you take it.

In the evening, the Charm of Xiangxi folk show is optional and easy to add later. Most people enjoy it. Some people are asleep by nine after eight hours on a mountain, and that is a legitimate outcome too — decide on the day, not now.

Day 4 — Tianmen Mountain

Sleep in Wulingyuan.

An hour’s drive into the city first, because the Tianmen Mountain cableway starts in Zhangjiajie city. That hour is the price of not changing rooms — you keep the same bed for all four nights. If you would rather move tonight and save the drive tomorrow, say so and we will do it.

The cableway runs 7,455 metres and climbs 1,277 metres in roughly half an hour. When it opened in 2005 it was the longest passenger cableway in Asia, and you feel every metre of it.

At the top, the west-line glass skywalk is sixty metres bolted to the cliff face, 1.6 metres wide, its highest point at 1,430 metres. It opened in 2011 as the first walkway of its kind in China. Shoe covers go over your shoes and are compulsory, which is why every photograph of that path has people wearing socks in it. If you would rather not walk it, there is an ordinary path around it and it costs you nothing.

Tianmen Cave is a hole straight through the mountain, described as the highest-altitude natural cave through a mountain in the world. You can climb the 999 steps of the Stairway to Heaven to reach it, or ride the escalators that run inside the mountain — the escalators are included, and more people take them than admit to it.

You come back down by the park’s own coach along Tongtian Avenue: 10.77 kilometres of road climbing from about 200 metres to around 1,300 metres, through ninety-nine bends. Private cars are not allowed on it, which is exactly why riding it is fun instead of frightening.

Day 5 — The bridge, then your flight

The bridge spans the Grand Canyon between two peaks. Four hundred and thirty metres long, six metres wide, its walking surface about three hundred metres above the valley floor, made of ninety-nine glass panels rated to carry around sixty tonnes each. It opened in August 2016 and holds a Guinness record as the world’s highest pedestrian bridge. You can see straight through it; whether you look down is between you and your stomach.

Then down into the canyon itself: about three hours in total, quiet, green and noticeably cooler than the ridge even in July. There are add-on rides on site — a zipline and a slide among them — and you can decide about those when you are standing next to them.

Lunch after the walk, and then the car takes you to the airport or the station.

Why the days are in this order

One base, one unpacking. Four nights in Wulingyuan, no room changes, no waiting around at eleven in the morning for a different hotel to be ready. The cost is about an hour of driving on day four, which we think is the right trade; you are welcome to disagree and we will move you instead.

The long drive comes first, while you are fresh. Day two is the only day with real distance in it and it is flat. Doing it before the mountains means nobody starts a hard walking day already tired of sitting down.

The two mountain days are neighbours on purpose. Yuanjiajie and Tianmen are both lift-dependent and both worthless in fog. Keeping them adjacent means bad weather is a swap rather than a cancellation — and we do swap them, usually the night before.

Day five is short and has no climbing in it. That is what you want in front of a long flight, and it is why this day is last rather than first.

What is included

• Every park ticket in the itinerary: Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, Tianmen Mountain, the Grand Canyon glass bridge, and Furong Town.
• Every internal transfer the itinerary depends on: the Bailong Elevator, the Tianzi Mountain cable car, the escalators inside Tianmen Mountain, shoe covers for the glass walkway, and the local transport inside Furong Town.
• A private vehicle and driver for all five days, including the pickup and the drop-off, at whatever hour your flight is.
• A licensed guide for the touring days.
• Breakfast each morning.
• Travel-agency liability insurance, which is required of every licensed operator in China.

What is not included

• Your hotel. Priced separately, because the standard you pick is the single biggest swing in the cost of a trip like this. Tell us what you want and it goes into the same written number.
• Lunch and dinner. We will tell you where to eat and what it should cost, and your guide will order for you if you want them to, but they are not inside the price.
• The Charm of Xiangxi show on day three, unless you ask us to add it.
• The little extras you decide about on the spot — the Ten-Mile Gallery train, the zipline and the slide at the bridge.
• Flights and trains to and from Zhangjiajie.

What it costs

As a planning figure: roughly RMB 1,950 to 2,100 per person, for a private group travelling together.

That is a planning figure and not a quote, so please do not book flights around it. What you get from us instead is one number in writing, with a list of everything inside it, once we know four things: your dates, how many of you there are, what standard of hotel you want, and whether you would like the show. It does not move after we have agreed it.

Two honest notes on that number. It is a per-person figure for a group of six — two people pay more each, because the vehicle and the guide cost the same whether there are two of you or six. And we put the right vehicle on it for the size of your party; we run several besides the two photographed on our team page, so the car your quote is built on is the one that fits you and your luggage rather than a fixed model.

Who this suits, and who it does not

It suits a first visit with five days, and anyone travelling as a family or a small group who would rather not join a coach tour that stops at four shops. It particularly suits people who want the pillar landscapes and something human alongside them — day two is the only one on this page that is about people rather than geology.

It does not suit you if you only have three days. We will happily build a shorter version of this trip, but we will not cram five days into three and pretend it worked.

It does not suit anyone who dislikes long drives, either — day two is honest about what it is.

And it is a walking trip. On flat ground most of the time, yes, but Ten-Mile Gallery is five kilometres and Tianmen has the option of nine hundred and ninety-nine steps. Nearly all of it can be shortened, and the escalators inside Tianmen Mountain exist precisely so nobody has to climb those steps. Tell us who is coming and we will plan around it rather than discovering the problem at the top.

Questions about this trip

Is it really private, or will other people join us?

Entirely private. Your own vehicle, your own driver and your own guide, and nobody else is ever added to the group. It is priced on that basis.

We only have three days. Can you cut it?

Yes, but we would rather build a different three days than delete two days from this one. In practice that means the Forest Park, Tianmen Mountain and the glass bridge, with Furong Town left out. Ask us for the three-day version and we will send it.

Are meals included?

Breakfast is. Lunch and dinner are not, which is deliberate: it lets you spend RMB 40 on noodles one day and more on something better the next, rather than eating what a group menu decided. Budget roughly RMB 60 to 120 per person for lunch. Your guide will order for you.

Can you book the hotels?

Yes, and most guests have us do it because the guide and the driver need to know where they are collecting you from. Hotels are quoted separately, on top of the per-person figure above, once you tell us what standard you want.

What happens if the weather is bad?

Fog is normal here and it ruins the high viewpoints while making the valleys better. We watch it and swap the order of the mountain days, usually the night before. Rain is less of a problem than people expect; the parks are at their best in it, and you will want a cheap poncho rather than an umbrella on exposed boardwalks.

Is it suitable for children or older parents?

Generally yes, with planning. The escalators inside Tianmen Mountain replace the 999 steps, there is a train along Ten-Mile Gallery, and vehicles do much of the distance inside the Forest Park. Tell us ages and anything we should know about knees or hearts before you arrive, and we will route around it rather than discovering the problem at the top.

Only three days?

Then take our three-day Zhangjiajie itinerary rather than compressing this one. Three days covers the Forest Park, the Grand Canyon glass bridge and Tianmen Mountain — it does not cover Furong Town, and pretending otherwise just makes all three days worse.

Only two days?

Then take our two-day Zhangjiajie itinerary rather than compressing this one. Two days covers the Forest Park and Tianmen Mountain; it does not cover Furong Town, and pretending otherwise just makes both days worse.

Ask about this trip

Tell us your dates and how many of you there are, and say if there is anything here you want changed. Most people change something — drop Furong Town, add Tianmen Mountain instead of the bridge, upgrade the hotel, leave out the show.

The shorter version of this 5-day trip is our four-day Zhangjiajie private tour, which goes to Fenghuang instead of Furong Town. All our multi-day trips are listed with prices on the Zhangjiajie private tours page, and if you only need a car for single days rather than a whole trip, that is the private driver page.