Jiuzhaikou (九寨溝) Left Us Speechless And Breathless !
Posted On Wednesday, November 12, 2014 at at 11:31 PM by Alvin
Well, well - after years of procrastinations, pointless debates, futile discussions, useless excuses over all matters large and trivial about mountain sickness, horrendous crowds, possible earthquakes, suitability of seasons, remote location and so on - we at last, made it to this beautiful part of China - Jiuzhaikou (九寨溝). And what a stunner ! We had all too often heard people use the description "now that's what I would call a Jiuzhaikou color" to exclaim any out-of-this-world scenes of lakes, lagoons and rivers. Now, we would not hesitate to do like-wise ! The patchworks of chaotic colors of algae-filled turquoise lagoons and mineral-rich rivers set against a background of Autumn golden, crimson and violet leaves would leave any jaded travellers speechless ! 
These water ways covering acres of land had all been fed through one of Mother Nature's best creation of surface- and underground-water systems; hence the waters that filled the moody lakes, joined up into streams, stumbled into rock pools, roared down as elegant waterfalls and formed shallow beaches had continuously been filtered and cleansed, the result of these filtering processes over millennia would become our piece of paradise on Earth - Jiuzhaikou !
We flew in from Chengdu on an early morning flight and touched down on the third highest airport in China, Jiuzhai Huanglong Airport, located at an altitude of over 3,440m ! Phew ! As Sichuan Province could be described as a rice bowl, this small but modern airport was located on the rim of this rice bowl. Luckily, a local mini bus quickly whisked us away (gradually down the rice bowl a bit to 2,900m) and we shopped for our beds near the entrance of Jiuzhaikou (溝口) and even managed to get accustomed to the dizzying height by taking a power stroll around the township of Zhang Zha (漳扎鎮). Thankfully on a week day and almost off-season, we did not find the "horrendous crowds" we had at first feared, but quite a gentile mountain village welcoming us.
I would no longer keep you from the stunning photos below, suffice to say that, we loved the place so much that we went in to the National Park a second time two days later. By spreading our visit over two days over the almost 60km length of Jiuzhaikou, we had ample time to take in all the view points as well as taking mega-long strolls along the plank ways which offered us close-up, different but equally beautiful vistas. As Jiuzhaikou was shaped like the alphabet "Y" with each segment covering around 20km, we made good use of the Park's green buses when our tired limbs cried for help. We stayed each day until almost closing time and our camera battery died of thirst and hunger. The colors, vistas and atmosphere of Jiuzhaikou would definitely stay in our memory for a very long time !
