Huanglong National Park is located in Songpan County of Aba, Sichuan Province. It is famous for its colourful travetine lakes and ponds. It is often one of the visited place if one is making a trip to the more famous Jiuzhaigou. One of my colleague remarked that climate in this area is somewhat delayed which means that it would still be fairly cold during our visit in April, almost still winter-like.
The main reason for this trip was Tibet. We flew in and out of China from Chengdu and had some extra buffer days so we decided to still make this trip to Huanglong and Jiuzhaigou while fully aware that spring isn't the best season to visit due to low water level. I first saw pictures of Huanglong in Paul's blog and mentioned it to my sister before. So she joked that if anyone saw the pictures I took of Huanglong, they will be dissuaded from visiting. Oops.
Getting to Huanglong National Park
Our mode of transport from Chengdu was by train. We took a train to Huanglong-Jiuzhai Railway Station. The tickets we managed to secure was from Chengdu South Railway Station at 08:20 AM, arriving at Huanglong-Jiuzhai station at 11:11 AM. Passport holding passengers can scan their passport at the gate. I noticed the gate that scan passports were usually manned by a staff.
On arrival at Huanglong-Jiuzhai station, we just followed the crowd and there were many public buses to Huanglong National Park, CNY 15 per person.
Luggage storage
We weren't sure if there was any leave luggage service at the national park and decided to leave our luggage at the hotel in Chengdu. We only took a smaller bag enough for 4 days in Huanglong, Jiuzhaigou and Chongqing. It was a free service and manned by staff, not locker based storage. So it would have been ok even if we had lugged along our luggage.
Tickets
We got the entrance and upward cableway ticket via trip.com for CNY 278.75 for 2 people.
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| Guided map of Huanglong NP from the back of the ticket |
We took a bus from entrance to the Ropeway Down Station. There were only the two of us in the ropeway even though there were other people in the queue. We took the ropeway to the upper station, then walked to the Five-coloured pond before making our way down.
Wanglong (Looking Dragon) Platform
It is a sightseeing platform siting at 3,530 metres above sea level. The platform looks over the main valley and snow-capped mountain of Huanglong. So it is said to give the poetic impression of "a full sigh of water layers by layers, flying dragon and dancing phoenix lingers."
Zhengyan Pool Observatory
Zhengyan Pool, the second largest rainbow pool group in Huanglong Valley and under the sun, the pool group comes in a variety of colours including golden, emerald green, wine red and fresh orange. Well, this was our view.
Sis bought bread and bottled drinks when she went out for dinner the night before while I slept. So that was lunch that we munched on while walking to the Five-coloured Pool.
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| Did you notice more than half of the legend reads 'Mirror Lake'? |
Huanglong Ancient Temple
We went in for a visit before continuing on to the Five-coloured Pool. The temple said to have a history of more than 600 years.
Five-coloured pond
The largest cluster of open air calcified colourful ponds at the highest sea level. So named five-coloured pond as it would looked like a jade dish of red, purple, blue and hues of green. Well, it wasn't really five colours when we were there.
Sleeping Beauty Mountain
I'll leave the description here and so you can compare to see if it indeed resembles a sleeping beauty. I might be lacking in imagination.
We descended back to the entrance direction. The rest of the viewpoints were fairly dry, like these.
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| Zhengyan (Flamboyant) Pond |
Getting to Jiuzhaigou from Huanglong National Park
To save time, we didn't want to backtrack to Huanglong-Jiuzhai station and I read that most people take a ride share or taxi. We just randomly picked a rideshare from Didi and booked. The driver did show up but told us that he had to transfer us to a taxi driver because entry to Jiuzhaigou area is regulated and he wouldn't be able to enter. He told me to cancel the ride reservation and just pay the taxi driver instead. For some reason I wasn't able to cancel the booking as it had exceeded certain timing. It was also good that it meant he had to cancel it from his side.
It was a bit shifty but we did arrive at Jiuzhaigou and the taxi driver was a better driver plus a better car.
After checking in, we asked for recommendation for dinner and was referred to have tomato yak meat pot. And yes, I was well enough to enjoy this. After meal, we did a grocery run for the next day's breakfast and lunch.
Side note: 🦥