Avatar's floating Hallelujah Mountain & (inset) China's Zhangjiajie  

Tour East Holidays wants to take you to the “Land of Avatar” — China.  The scenes of the floating Hallelujah Mountain in the fantasy mega-movie, which came from the imaginative mind of Canadian James Cameron, were actually inspired by the real-life quartz-sandstone mountain towers which rise from the forest floor in China’s magnificent Zhangjiajie National Park in the country’s southern Hunan region.


Tour East Holidays, knows the park well and has been sending Canadians to Zhangjiajie for many years.

So, because of the added interest in the park inspired by the movie, Tour East has announced that it is arranging special private tours with private guides to China’s Zhangjiajie National Park for Canadians.

The 5-day, 4-night park tours can be combined with Tour East Holidays’ inventory of China trips that include its Shanghai Expo Tour, where your clients can attend the world’s largest-ever world exhibition either before or after their visit to Zhangjiajie.

Since the movie’s release earlier this year, interest in the massive park dotted with waterfalls, lakes, towering cliffs and lush vegetation, has peaked and now just about every tourist to China is making a visit to the park a must.

Avatar is the biggest box office cash hit ever, with revenues topping US $2 billion so far.

Recently, the Chinese government announced it was renaming the park’s Southern Sky Mountain, which, at 3,544 feet, is the largest rock tower in the park, “Avatar Hallelujah Mountain” in recognition of the park’s role in the film.

But Zhangjiajie is much more than towering mountains.

It’s also home to Baofeng Lake, which sits atop one of the mountain ranges, as well as some of the rarest plant species on earth, and Yingwo Village, a place where local artisans gather along a narrow rocky path leading back to the park entrance, and sell you some unique handmade crafts for only pennies.

The park is also home to a UNESCO World Heritage Site known as Wulingyuan — a tropical forest that covers 690 square kilometres and where most of the 3,100 pointed sandstone columns that inspired Avatar’s “floating mountains” can be found.

While in Zhangjiajie , guests of Tour East Holidays also get a chance to visit Golden Whip Stream, another special area within the park where visitors can hike for seven kilometres surrounded by grotesque peaks reshaped by time and get lost among waterfalls and exotic plants.

For fans of Avatar, there’s never been a better time to visit China.