City of Kunming and Yunnan Province

5. The Stone Forest Near Kunming

Kunming's most celebrated attraction is a geological wonder, the limestone pillars clustered in the Stone Forest, some 50 miles to the east. Now they have a new highway to the Sani Minority Village at the park entrance. The trip by bus now takes 90 minutes. When we went in 1984 it took 4 hours. Acres of vertical limestone shafts, exposed 270 million years ago when the ocean receded from southwest China, sprout like an immense grove of bamboo.