Zhangjiajie: three thousand stone pillars in the cloud

Zhangjiajie looks invented. Inside Wulingyuan, more than three thousand quartz-sandstone pillars rise straight out of the subtropical forest, some over two hundred metres tall, with pines growing improbably off their tops and cloud pouring between them for much of the year. The most famous of them, in the Yuanjiajie section, was renamed the Avatar Hallelujah Mountain after the film borrowed its silhouette, and the viewing platforms there are where the scale finally registers.

Getting around is half the experience. The Bailong Elevator runs 326 metres up the outside of a cliff in glass boxes; cable cars climb to Tianzi Mountain, where on a clear morning you look down on an entire sea of stone spires; and the First Bridge Under Heaven is a natural rock span with a very long drop underneath it. At the bottom of the valley, the Golden Whip Stream is the quiet counterweight — a flat seven-and-a-half-kilometre walk beside clear water, macaques on the path, the pillars towering overhead.

Separate from the park and right beside the city, Tianmen Mountain offers a different sort of nerve test: one of the world's longest cable-car rides, the 99 hairpins of Tongtian Avenue, the 999 steps up to the huge natural arch of Heaven's Gate, and glass walkways bolted to the outside of the cliff face. Give the area three days if you can, because mist is common and a second morning is often what buys you the view. Spring and autumn are the best windows, and travelling midweek makes a real difference to the queues.