This cable car ride is one of the most scenic in the world

Expect the unexpected as you head for the hills on the Ngong Ping cable car.

This cable car ride is one of the most scenic in the world

By Mark Dapin

Updated April 1, 2025, first published September 5, 2023

Expect the unexpected as you head for the hills on the Ngong Ping cable car.

Hong Kong is something of a dream destination for lovers of up-and-downy things, such as cable railways, elevators and escalators.

Ngong Ping 360 has views of the Tian Tan Buddha. Picture: Shutterstock

The Central Mid-Levels escalator is the longest outdoor covered escalator system in the world and the 135-year-old Peak Tram was the first funicular in the continent. But for my money, the best vertically oriented transportation in all of Hong Kong is the Ngong Ping 360 Cable Car ride from Tung Chung new town to the village of Ngong Ping on Lantau Island.

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There's an MTR station at Tung Chung, at the end of a direct line from Hong Kong/Central via Kowloon. It's a two-minute stroll from the MTR to the cable car terminal - and that's all the walking necessary to climb 5.7 kilometres into the hills, through outlooks familiar only to the birds of prey that soar and swoop in Hong Kong's skies.

The cable car (or "vertical gondola") combines the exhilaration of a ski lift with the comfort of a cinema seat. As the cabin takes off up its cable ropeway, passengers surrender to a dynamic suspension that doesn't feature much in the lives of desk-bound adults.

At the end of the cable car's 25-minute run, passengers alight at Ngong Ping, where they are greeted by a strange mix of the holy and the hokey.

There are views to the wetlands in Tung Chung Bay, the airport, the sea bridge to Macau and China, Lantau North Country Park, and finally the Ngong Ping Plateau and the 34-metre-tall bronze figure of the Tian Tan Buddha.

At the end of the cable car's 25-minute run, passengers alight at Ngong Ping, where they are greeted by a strange mix of the holy and the hokey. A herd of sacred cows wanders unmolested around statues of the Twelve Divine Generals, while most visitors ignore a number of strange attractions including the Cable Car Gallery (where you can have a picture of your picture grafted onto images of cables cars in Germany, Switzerland, Brazil or Spain, so you can pretend you went to one or more of those places instead) and the Ngong Ping Sewage Treatment Information Centre.

More popular is a kind of educational adjunct to the Po Lin Monastery, where you can Buddha yourself by imposing your face on a statue of the Buddha via a kind of digital Buddha photobooth. In the ornate monastery itself, tables of monks chant hypnotically in what seems as though it should be a private ritual - so it's all the more of a privilege to witness.

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The monastery cafe serves extremely appetising vegetarian dishes with deeply unappetising names: five spices with gluten; curry with gluten; and sweet and sour with gluten - and the only option is a mixed plate for about $8.50. It's a culinary revelation that's worth the entire journey: I've had steaks that tasted less like beef than the gluten in the startling "five spices" concoction.

After my favourite lunch in Hong Kong, I hunt around for the Wisdom Path (a trail of giant wooden columns engraved with the verses of a sutra) then climb the 250 steps to the seat of Tian Tan Buddha to share the statue's dramatic perspectives of the island and beyond.

As for the Wisdom Path, I never find it.

Insert your own joke here.

The passage into the Lantau hills costs from about $44/$20.50 (adult/child), one way. See np360.com.hk