7-Day Shennongjia and Wudangshan: Forest and Sacred Peaks

Your guide meets you at Yichang East station or at Yichang airport and drives you to the hotel on the river. Yichang has about four million people in the prefecture, sits at the point where the Yangtze leaves the mountains, and has been the transhipment point for everything going in or out of the gorge for two thousand years. It was also, in 1940, the reason the Japanese took it: below Yichang the river opens out and the defences were gone.

There is usually time in the evening for a walk on the riverside promenade and dinner: the local red-oil noodles, the river fish, and the radish dumplings that Yichang eats fried. If the group is arriving late, the guide briefs the next day over dinner and confirms the dam reservation, which has to be made with passport details in advance.

Meals
Dinner

Accommodation
Yichang, riverside.

Morning - west and up
The high-speed line west out of Yichang crosses into the mountains within twenty minutes and Xingshan station is about forty minutes out. From there the road climbs: Shennongjia is a forestry district, not a city, and the inhabited parts sit between about 900 and 1,700 metres in a landscape of steep, forested ridges with almost no flat ground. It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2016 as a natural property, and it is the only one Hubei has.

Guanmen Mountain
Guanmen Shan, the first valley on the way in, is the reserve's introduction: a gorge with a road and a path up it, holding the collections and research stations rather than the high scenery. What is here is the botany and the zoology of the region in condensed form - the endemic and relict species, the medicinal herb garden that justifies the name Shennong (the Divine Farmer, who is said to have tested plants here), the golden snub-nosed monkey enclosure, and the giant salamander breeding station, which is worth seeing: Andrias davidianus grows to over a metre and a half and is critically endangered in the wild.

Lunch
In Muyu, the small town at the foot of the reserve, or at the valley entrance. The mountain cooking is simple: smoked pork, wild mushrooms, river fish, and the potato that is the staple up here because rice does not grow at this altitude.

Afternoon
The rest of the day is paced to the altitude. Your guide will usually add the Shennong Altar - a modern memorial complex to the Divine Farmer, with a giant statue above the valley - or simply leave the afternoon open, because the following day starts early and the light at Shennong Peak is a morning thing.

Evening
Dinner in Muyu. Nights here are cold even in August; bring a layer.

Meals
Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Muyu town or Pingqian, Shennongjia.

Early start
Shennong Peak is 3,106 metres and it is the highest point in central China. The road up from Muyu takes about an hour and a half and the last section is a stair. Going early is not optional if you want to see anything: the cloud comes up from the valleys by mid-morning and stays, and on maybe one day in three the summit is in clear air.

The summit and Banbiyan
At the top are the stone pillars of Banbiyan, a karst stone forest at over 2,500 metres, and below it the sub-alpine belt: fir and birch, rhododendron that flowers in May and June, and the bamboo understorey. The vegetation zones stack vertically here in a way that is unusual at this latitude, which is precisely why the site was inscribed - the property protects one of the most species-rich temperate forests anywhere, and a long list of plants that survived the Pleistocene glaciations in these valleys and nowhere else.

The golden snub-nosed monkey lives in the fir-bamboo belt. It is endemic to a small area of central and south-west China, it is endangered, and seeing it is a matter of luck and of going with someone who knows where the troops have been feeding. Your guide will be straight with you about the odds rather than promising it.

Lunch
Carried or at the simple restaurant on the peak circuit. There is not much choice up here and the guide orders the smoked pork and the potato.

Afternoon
Down through the valleys - the boardwalk at the Primeval Forest, and the viewpoints over the ridges - and back to Muyu. If the group has the energy, the short trail at the Shennong Valley rim is the best hour of walking in the district.

Evening
Dinner in Muyu.

Meals
Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Muyu town or Pingqian, Shennongjia.

Very early start
Dajiu Lake sits in a basin at about 1,700 metres on the western side of the district - a meadow wetland of nine interconnected lakes with the mountains standing around it in a ring and no outlet that anybody used to be able to find, which is why the water sits and why the mist forms. It is the most photographed place in Shennongjia, and it is worth the four o'clock start: the mist is on the water from first light until about eight, and after that it is an ordinary pretty lake.

The wetland
The site is a peat bog with a boardwalk running through it, and the ecology is the interest: sphagnum, the sedge and reed communities, the deer park on the far side where the sika are kept semi-wild, and the birdlife - the lakes are on a migration route and the spring and autumn passages bring through waterfowl that do not stop anywhere else in Hubei. The nine lakes are named and numbered, and the walk between the first four takes about an hour.

Lunch
At Pingqian, the small settlement at the wetland entrance, which exists almost entirely to serve the wetland's visitors.

Afternoon
Back over the ridge and down to Muyu, or onward if the day is a transfer day. The road west from Dajiu Lake connects to the Wuxi and Chongqing side; the road east goes back down to Xingshan.

Evening
Dinner where you are staying.

Meals
Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Muyu town or Pingqian, Shennongjia.

Morning - Tianyan
Tianyan, the Swallow's Nest, is a short boardwalk circuit through the forest on the way out - a limestone ravine, a bridge over a waterfall, and the swifts that nest in the rock faces and give the place its name. An hour, mostly flat, and a reasonable last walk if the weather on the high ground has not cooperated.

The road out
Then the descent. The road from Muyu down to Xingshan drops about 1,200 metres in under two hours on a properly engineered but relentlessly twisting mountain road, and this is why we do not let clients self-drive it: the gradients, the blind corners, the tour buses on the inside line and the fog that comes up without warning make it a job for a professional driver who has done it a hundred times.

Lunch and onward
Lunch on the road, and then either south-east to Yichang - about three and a half hours in total, arriving in time for the river - or north-east to Wudangshan, which is a longer day at about five hours and is best broken at Shiyan. Your guide will have told you which the night before and will have the next day's train or site reservation in hand.

Meals
Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Yichang or at the foot of Wudangshan.

Early start
The mountain opens early and the shuttle runs from the gate through a series of valleys to the separate sites. Going up first is the usual order, because the summit cloud usually burns off by mid-morning and returns after two. Your guide takes the Qiongtai cable car with you - about 1,500 metres of line, twenty minutes - and walks the last stretch to the top.

The Golden Summit
At 1,612 metres, the peak carries a walled enclosure and, inside it, a hall cast in bronze and gilded, assembled in Beijing in 1416 and carried up the mountain in pieces. It is small - about five metres across - and it has stood there through six centuries of lightning, which is why the ridge is fitted with conductors and why the guides have a story about the fire that used to be lit every sixty years. The hall holds a bronze Zhenwu and the original lamps. The enclosure is reached by a narrow stair through a gate in the wall, and the queue in high season is the one thing to budget for: an hour is normal in July and October.

Nanyan Palace
Nanyan, the South Cliff, is the other reason to come. The palace is set into a recess in the cliff on the south face, with halls built out over the drop on timber supports and stone brackets, and a terrace that projects into the air above the valley. The most photographed object on the mountain is here: the Dragon Head Incense Burner, a two-metre stone dragon carved in the Yuan and cantilevered off the edge of the cliff, on which pilgrims used to walk out to set incense, and which is now fenced. The carving, the brackets under the halls and the way the whole complex is keyed into the rock are the finest surviving examples of Ming construction on a cliff anywhere in China.

Lunch
On the mountain. The food is simple - noodles, rice, mountain vegetables, and the local mushrooms - and the guide orders a plain table. Vegetarian food is easy here, since the temples run their own kitchens, and Wudang's Taoist vegetarian cooking is worth asking for.

Afternoon
Down by shuttle to Taizipo, the Prince's Slope, where the Nine-Bend Wall and the hall complex of 1412 sit on a slope with the brackets doing most of the visual work. If the group has the legs, the old stone path from Nanyan down to the valley floor is a real pilgrim route with shrines along it.

Evening
Dinner at the foot of the mountain.

Meals
Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
At the foot of Wudangshan.

Morning - the taiji session
Wudang is the home of the internal martial arts as they are practised now, and the attribution goes back to Zhang Sanfeng, a figure of the Song or the Yuan who is credited with founding the Wudang school. The history is disputed and your guide will say so; what is not disputed is that the mountain has supported a continuous community of practitioners for centuries, and that the schools at the foot of it teach a real curriculum. Your session runs about ninety minutes with an English-speaking instructor, on the forms rather than the fighting application: stance, weight transfer, and the first section of a bare-hand form, done slowly enough that someone who has never done it can follow. Wear flat shoes and clothes you can move in.

Lunch
At the foot of the mountain, a Taoist vegetarian table if the group wants it - the temple kitchens here cook without meat, without alliums and without strong spice, and the result is better than it sounds.

Afternoon - Taizipo and the way out
Taizipo, the Prince's Slope, is named for a legend about the young Zhenwu being pushed to give up his cultivation and the slope being the place it happened. The buildings are 1412: a hall, a scripture pavilion, and the famous Nine-Bend Wall, a zig-zag retaining wall climbing the slope whose purpose is structural but whose effect is to force you to slow down and approach the hall at an angle. The bracketing under the eaves is the thing to look at. From there the shuttle takes you down to the gate and your vehicle takes you to Shiyan East for the evening train.

Evening
Back in Wuhan by about nine. Dinner is on the train or late in Wuhan, depending on the departure.

Meals
Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Wuhan.