Route for the day
We visited Pingshan Lake Grand Canyon which was about an hour drive from Zhangye city. We had a great time exploring the canyon spending unexpectedly about 6 hours trekking through the canyon, gorge and valley, it was an incredible place. In the late afternoon we drove forward to Badain Jaran Town where we rested, relaxed, had our dinner and stayed for one night.
Pingshan Lake GRAND Canyon
Pingshan Lake Grand Canyon was a 4A classified attraction. On our way there we wondered if it was would be similar to PingGou Danxia Scenic Area where we had visited two days ago and if it would be worth a visit.
We arrived at the scenic area ticketing entrance at about 9am in the morning. Our guide went into the office to purchase our tickets and the rest of us headed to the toilet to do our “usual”. As according to our guide the next “toilet break” in the park was not predictable.
The entrance tickets could be bought on site, on Trip.com and GetYourGuide. I did find that being in China, Trip.com (a China website) was a better site to get tickets. The attraction packages were more diversify. There were packages for entry with tourist bus, or package that included transfer from town etc. In China majority of the entrance to scenic sites gave discount for senior age 60 and above regardless of nationalities.
From the map on site we saw many hiking route (purple/brown). There were also green route for adventure car ride and the orange/blue route was for those keen on “camel ride”, Since we had a guide we trusted him to bring us hiking to the “better” sights/highlights (hiking) of this Canyon. We just informed him that we were not into “camel ride”.
The first stretch of the route in the scenic area was a tourist shuttle bus from the entrance to platform 1. Platform 1 was named “Nine Dragons Viewing Platform”.
It was a vast sea of red mountain ridges, we supposed they looked like the backs of Chinese Dragons which accounted for its name. From platform 1, to its right we could see a huge red majestic cliff. That was called the General cliff (将军石). The word “General” refered to “Army General.
There was a boardwalk that took us directly to the base of General Cliff. Wow! the cliff was massive, it was formed with one layer of red mud rock on top of another all the way to the top. It looked more like a fortress.
Zhangye Pingshan Lake Grand Canyon covered an area of 100 square kilometers with an altitude of 1,500 to 2,550 meters. The red rocks at the Zhangye Pingshan Lake Grand Canyon deposited from Mesozoic Jurassic to Cenozoic Tertiary, which had been 180 million to 240 million years ago.
After we passed General Cliff we reached Viewing Platform 2. Here the sign board said “Lover Peak” (情侣峰) which on closer inspection did look like an embracing couple. One of the figures was taller with straigher body definitely looked like a male and the other figure looked like a shorter female with a bigger bump. The best part was that there was a gap near the top, which made the rock structure looked like two heads leaning into each other.
From Platform 2 we did a back track and then onto platform 3. There were stone stairs, wood stairs, boardwalks and dirt track. Walking on them we felt safe as they were well built and reliable but still alot of climbing up, down and hiking. All these needed energy and strength to go on and we were still long way to the end.
It was still morning and the weather had not turned hot. Trekking to these various platforms was very manageable, still very pleasant as there were plentiful of unique rock structures to look out.
At platform 3 were two multilayered rocks. The name of these rocks “combi” was “Tortoise God “Greeting Longetivity” (神龟问寿). We felt that the “name” was too “random” and found it difficult to relate to the rock pair in front of us. The short fatter rock could be pictured as the “tortise” but the rest would be totally up to ones’ imagination.
Soon we were hiking into the canyon. We were exploring the canyon at its base. It was an amazing and fun hiking experience. There were canyon walls that were so close that they formed only a “slit” for us to slip through. We walked and walked and came to a dead end and the only way forward was to climb up steep metal stair to the top of the canyon.
We came to another stretch of the canyon, this time tje canyon floor was much broader. We felt so tiny towered by undulating cliff walls on both sides of the canyon.
We reached another dead end and have to take the stairs up to the higher ground to continue our exploration.
Finally we were near the exit which was on even higher ground. From the top we could see the path that we had walked, we could see more tiny people on the canyon floor. From the base of the canyon we were very impressed by the height of the red canyon walls. At the top looking down we were “blown” away by the immense vastness of this place.
By the time we were done with our hike it was closed to 3 pm about six hours since we started at the scenic area entrance. At the end of our walking we finally found a cafe for a break. The cafe were not serving any drinks we only managed to buy some yougurt icecream and had a “cool” break.
Badain Jaran Town
After Pingshan Lake Grand Canyon it was an hour drive to Badain Jaran Town. We stayed one night in a hotel in town and set out to visit Badain Jaran Desert the next morning. Badain Jaran Town was a town under the jurisdiction of Alxa Right Banner (阿拉善右旗), Alxa League, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region
Our hotel was not serving dinner, so we walked out in search of a nice restaurant. We found one restaurant along the main road. The signboard said “private kitchen”, which sounds like “good home cooked meal”. We went in for our dinner. Dinner cost for four of us was ¥64.50
Hotel for the night
Our stay was, Alashan Right Banner Shangshiyuan Hotel which “China Discovery” had booked. It was located along the main road.
Our room was nice and clean and the toilet was bright and looked good. The bed in our room was a king size bed.
Breakfast was served in the dining hall on the first level. Food was okay.
Other Accommodation Nearby
