A Tour to Xiling Gorge Narrows Scenic Area

A Tour to Xiling Gorge Narrows Scenic Area – Cable Car

Fairy Creek cannot attract you as much to come all the way to travel here as other magnificent mountains. However, if you get a chance to tour in Yichang, it is sensible for you to enjoy it.

The man-made cement parterre, neat gravel pavement and the trees that are trimmed to a point or a ball would remind you the Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. While only after a several-mile walk, someone calls for taking the cable car. When you look up you will find colorful double chairs are hung on a long and endless wire rope. The wire rope lifted all the chairs up to the sky. While under your chair, there is a more than 100 meters deep canyon.

With green mountains around and the wind whizzing past my ears, I glanced down and found that there were several cars running on the road in the bottom of the canyon. The cable is about 1000 meters long and is divided into several parts. Each time when there is a chair passing by, the whir of turning wheels could be heard. It is ten more times higher than the ferris wheel in amusement parks which makes me worry that whether the cable would cut off. When thinking about this, I cannot help feeling stiff.

A Tour to Xiling Gorge Narrows Scenic Area - Immortal Cave

There surprisingly emerged the Immortal Cave before seeing Xianren Stream (Immortal Stream). Though it is with amazing and various landscapes, it is not steep at all; all that can be felt is a bit of cool. It has nothing different from the other caves in Yichang, only with a larger size and less visitors. We spent more than half an hour looking around the wonder stones inside, we found that the exit was just beside the entrance and that really surprised us.

As the Immortal Cave is the only attraction on the top of the mountain, most visitors would down the mountain after they visited the cave. The cave keeper told us that we could find a lot of beautiful landscapes on our way down the mountain. Generally, we will climb up to the top of the mountain and then down the mountain. But it is just on the contrary here. We started to wonder what would be there down the mountain.

A Tour to Xiling Gorge Narrows Scenic Area - Immortal Stream

Perhaps all the mountain paths in the world are so winding to the same extent. However, we can hear the sound of water drops after a short distance. A lucid stream gets into our eyes, and that is the Immortal Stream. The kids are so excited that they kicked out their shoes and ran into the water, shouting loudly "Let's catch the crabs". We waded into the water followed the kids without thinking too much and started the game of catching crabs. These experienced kids got some crabs a second later. Gradually, we also became good at catching crabs. We moved away stones which stayed in the water, leaving the crabs nowhere to hide. I was the most stupid among all the people, only caught a finger-sized crab.

A Tour to Xiling Gorge Narrows Scenic Area – Waterfall

The mountain path along the stream acted as our guide. After about three or four hours walk. Our feet finally felt tired and painful. There is an old saying goes that it is easy to climb up the mountain but difficult to get down. Therefore, those people who want to go over the Immortal Stream have to prepare to overcome this big difficulty - get down the mountain. While I were thinking, the sound of the water suddenly became very clear, and the mountain path also gave us a fast change, then the waterfall came into our sights - a short waterfall with a rapid flow pouring down violently in front of us, beating directly against a huge stone. Moreover, a deep pond appeared in the stone because of the long-time beat by the water. The pond only covers two or three square meters but it is rather deep, we could even not see the bottom.

A Tour to Xiling Gorge Narrows Scenic Area – Narrows

When you are standing besides the waterfall that means you are at the foot of the mountain. Look up and think about what you had been through, the streams, cable cars, and the cableway. But we can't see them any more; we could only see a deep canyon. And to the right opposite side of the canyon, unexpectedly, there appeared a broad river - Yangtze River, we have already arrived at the narrows of Yangtze River. The waterfall flows into Yangtze River here, and there were several great ships floating on the river. The magnificent scenery in front of us really surprised us and totally different with what we had seen through the whole way. Just like an explorer finally get a result completely exceed his expectations which seems as a legend.

There were several boats bordered by the riverside through which we could get to the downtown of Yichang. As they charged unreasonably high, we decided to backtrack up to the mountain. We fastened our steps for fear that the cable cars stopped, we didn't feel easy until we were told that the cable cars would work very late when we reached the top of the mountain.

A Tour to Xiling Gorge Narrows Scenic Area – Tips

1. Do not drink the water flows down the rocks in Immortal Cave since it contains too much calcium carbonate.

2. Take more food and water with you since there is only one shop in the mountain.

3. You can step on the huge stone under the waterfall, but be careful, don't slip into the pond since there is no railing and the pond might be pretty deep.