Dense Karst at the Stone Forest 石林 in Yunnan 云南
The Stone Forest was unexpectedly big. I already saw from the highway how some deposits of limestone are already exposed and yet are not part of the park yet. It seems this place is really limestone central. To think that these limestone deposits would span several provinces Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi and also neighboring countries such as Vietnam and Thailand. The South China Karst is really an amazing natural phenomenon. It is also fortunate that these deposits are very accessible, meaning they are exposed. All man has to do is build roads to it and put a ticket stand in front.
Impressive Karst Formation at the Stone Forest 石林 in Yunnan 云南
My Swede companions seem to be in a hurry to go back, actually they were just worried that they might miss the bus going back to Kunming, so instead of going by foot we took the tourist bus. This bus takes us on a whirlwind tour of the Stone Forest. I was fortunate to sit on the left side of the bus which was where all the sights were. There doesn’t seem to be any way to stop the tourist bus as we wanted to get off along the way but not even the local tourists were stopping. The bus was going fast enough that I wasn’t able to get sharp photos of the karst. For future visitors of the Stone Forest, ensure that you have enough time so that you can just walk around the park yourself. By getting on the bus, you get to see what you will miss by not walking.
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