The Southern China Route: Pillars, Karst and Out Through Hong Kong

This is the landscape route. No Wall, no Forbidden City, no Terracotta Army — two of the strangest pieces of geology in China, a food city, and an exit into Hong Kong that takes forty-seven minutes.

It is the trip for people who have already done the classics, and for people who never wanted them.

The shape

Fly into Zhangjiajie — usually via Changsha, Shanghai or Guangzhou — and out of Hong Kong. Every leg between them is rail.

The legs

1. 1

   Zhangjiajie — four nights

   Start with the harder destination while you have energy for it. Four nights, not three: the park ticket runs four consecutive days, the fourth is insurance against a day of cloud, and it is the day you reach Yangjiajie and Ten-Mile Gallery, which most visitors never see.

   Sleep in Wulingyuan, at the park gate, not in Zhangjiajie city — the forty kilometres between them decides how much of your trip is spent on a bus.

   Budget CNY 593 per adult in entry fees. It is the most expensive stop in this article by a wide margin.

2. Zhangjiajie to Guilin — about 7 h direct, or change at Changsha
3. 2

   Yangshuo — five nights

   This is the hard part of the route and the reason to plan it rather than improvise it. There is no direct flight between these two destinations, whatever an itinerary you were sold implies. The direct train takes 6 h 56 and runs twice a day, the first at 07:17.

   Changing at Changsha South is faster — 1 h 43 then 2 h 35 — and lets you leave at a civilised hour. The full comparison is here.

   Five nights because the arrival day is written off, and because after Zhangjiajie you will want days that ask nothing of you. Sleep in Yangshuo, not Guilin. The best day here is a bicycle in the Yulong valley and costs almost nothing.

4. Guilin to Guangzhou — 2 h 30, roughly every 15 minutes
5. 3

   Guangzhou — one night

   One night, and only because breaking the journey here is more pleasant than not. Guangzhou is the home of Cantonese cooking, and a proper dim sum lunch is a defensible reason to stop.

   On a shorter trip, skip it and go straight through. The station is the same one the Hong Kong trains leave from.

6. Guangzhou South to Hong Kong West Kowloon — 47 minutes
7. 4

   Hong Kong — four nights

   Forty-seven minutes on the fastest service, with immigration for both sides cleared in one stop at West Kowloon rather than at a land border. It is the cleanest exit from mainland China there is.

   Four nights is generous and deliberate. After ten days of karst and cable cars, Hong Kong is a genuine change of register, and the long-haul options home are better than anywhere else on this route.

When to run it

This route is more weather-dependent than the classic one, because both landscapes are the point.

Avoid the first week of October, when the whole country travels at once. Details in Zhangjiajie by month and Guilin and Yangshuo by month.

Cutting it to ten days

Drop Guangzhou and take two nights off Hong Kong. That gives Zhangjiajie four and Yangshuo four, which is the minimum either deserves.

What we would not do is cut Zhangjiajie to three nights to keep the rest. If it is only getting three, it is better not to go at all — the transfer out is seven hours and the entry fees are the highest in the country.

The other direction

Running it in reverse — Hong Kong first, Zhangjiajie last — works logistically but not practically. You would be doing the most physically demanding destination at the end of a fortnight, and you would be crossing out of the mainland into Hong Kong at the start, which for most visa positions means you cannot get back in.