Travel Guide Shilin 石林

As a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the South China karst formations stretch from the famous Sucre sugar breads to Yunnan province. At Kunming, they turn into a fascinating ruiniforme relief: Stone forest, or Shilin. This forest is a magical place, a real natural museum, a kind of fantastic chaos of rocks with more strange shapes than others. Shame on the fact that mass tourism and greed have transformed the place into a sort of Disneyland that agacera more than one, quite rightly. The site is exceptional: from afar, these stone formations look like a huge forest.Originally, these rocky zigzagging were underwater: a simple part of the underwater funds, formed of calcareous layers shaped by an erosion of 270 million years and subjected to strains of the earth's crust to become this large set of stone columns. The strange formations of this labyrinth of rocks, sometimes 30 m high, spread over 27 000 ha. Only 80 ha are accessible to tourists (entry: 175 RMB, a very prohibitive price!), with trails over 5 km. In this petrified labyrinth, it is easy to get lost if you leave the paths in the rock.Near the Stone Forest lives the ethnic minority of the Sani. Many of them come to sell their craft making nice embroidery at the entrance to the forest. On the 24 th day of the 6 th lunar month (late July-beginning of August), at the Fireworks festival, the young Sani people sang and dance in moonlight in a natural amphitheatre.