Jiuzhaigou is a very popular national park in northern Sichuan Province in an area that is predominately Tibetan Buddhist, as is a lot of Sichuan, which makes it a very desirable alternative to visiting Tibet, since foreigners don't need any special permits to be in Sichuan. The park has hundreds of km of hiking trail, and spans 2 deep valleys. Cascading waterfalls, some fed by underground rivers, come one after another. When fed by an underground river the level of the lakes above waterfalls never changes, and so the waterfalls never get flooded or dry out during drought. As is the case at a lot of National Parks around the world, the bulk of the crowd does not stray far from the parking places, in this case bus stops served by the park's transportation system.