21/6/25
Rain consistently and heavily fell from around 5am. Loud enough to wake us. Jonathan’s concern for the bikes led him downstairs to ensure their cover hadn’t been pounded off by the rain. When we woke up again at 8am it was starting to subside a bit. First on the agenda, instant coffee in the restaurant. We not only watched a ‘digital nomad’ eating, but listened. Chomping with your mouth open was was culturally normal, to show appreciation of the food.
The forecast for the day was the least wet we could hope for. After a relaxing morning we hurriedly got ready and made for Kunming East Bus Station. Line 5 from the nearby station, Huashan West Road. The station was clean and quiet. WeChat didn’t let us buy tickets. Some payments just don’t work. Usually the combined payment QR codes that allow use of Alipay as well, fail. Fortunately we had cash. It cost ¥4 or 40p each. A stiff ticket card was issued and as well as the overtly placed security cameras, there was also a metal detector and x-ray machine to pass through.
Expectedly, the train arrived promptly. Every 8 minutes on the dot. Only one stop along we changed to Line 3 at Wuyi Road. The concourse was larger, with shops and restaurants. Hot butter wafted through. The next train had colourful seats and digital screens. Announcements were in English too. Very modern and wonderfully clean. We took it all the way to the end of the line.
The station exit was directly in front of the bus station. Concerned with how late it was we moved as quickly as possible. Though less modern, the bus station was equally clean. Ticket counters were manned by women only. Immediately, she knew our destination. Luckily we’d brought our passports. Tickets were little squares of paper. They even identified the registration plate of the bus we’d be travelling on. It was 10:30am and we’d be on the 11am bus. The internet had vaguely told us they were every half an hour.
The waiting room was large with comfortable seats. Ticket barriers accessed the boarding area. A fleet of smart, medium sized electric buses stood ready to be boarded. Staff pointed us to the correct bus. Confirmed by the registration plate. It was 11:07am when it left. Unlike the train, it wasn’t punctual.
Stone Forest was 80km away and was rated as a 5A class tourist rating under the Chinese system. Yet more limestone. This time resembling a petrified forest over an area of 500km2. We were only going to view a relatively small part of course. Our bus started going the wrong way. Towards Shilin town. We panicked, but it soon pulled into a rest area, we switched buses, sadly to a petrol one.
Basically, it was Disneyland. A huge tourist town. Coach parks everywhere. Restaurants and shops. When we got off the bus we had no idea where the ticket office was. People pointed us down the road in defiance of the only sign we could see. Frustrated, we complied. A ticket office was tucked right in the back of the ‘town’. £16.50, including the electric buggy to take us the few kilometres to the entrance. It looked like they’d changed the positioning of the ticket checkpoint a few times in the past.
Naively maybe, we weren’t expecting it to be quite so ridiculously touristy, but it’s China. Restaurants were even built around some of the limestone karst. At first we tried to plot a route but the maps were next to useless. Every sign with a map was different, with a different orientation. Paths were like a labyrinth. We later read that the paths were actually in line with the natural cracks that had occurred in the rocks.
Following the signs to Peak View Pavilion we hoped to see the karst from above. Unsurprisingly, everyone had the same thought and it was excessively noisy. Tour guides were shouting into their microphones that deafened us with their speakers. Everyone was trying to get an ‘instagram shot’. Escaping from the pavilion we found our way into a beautiful gorge. The steep path was probably putting people off. Up and down many steep stairs we went. Soon there was only murmurings of the crowds and we were buried in, jungle cloaked, towering karst. We had found a Stone Forest.
Experienced maze navigators, we were not. Working out where we were going was proving to be time consuming. A completely different place was titled the ‘Deep and Narrow Gorge’. All the points of interest had classic Chinese transliterated names. Jonathan was keen to find the ‘Eternal Mushrooms’, so we tried to head south. Archways of stone and quiet paths. There were very few people here considering how busy it had been when we arrived.
Detouring to see some cliff paintings made the journey even longer. The oldest of which were from the Han dynasty. It reminded us that we didn’t know much, if anything, of Chinese history yet. The path took use through orchards. We were far outside the usual route though we saw a few other people. The plums were ripe, and we naughtily stuffed a few in our mouths and our bag.
The ‘Eternal Mushrooms’ rose up in front of us. Far more top heavy than the Major Stone Forest we’d already seen. We reached a viewpoint with a pagoda and sat to eat a baked good we’d kept from the day before. After enjoying the view of the many arrangements of rocks, one of which looked like a caped priest, we marched to the electric bus stop. This time picking from bayberry trees.
We had one last attraction to see. The aptly named Minor Stone Forest. We were enticed by a sign to the highest point of Bushao mountain, we hiked up quickly only to find it was closed off. No viewpoint for us. It was fairly obvious how much of a small space it was and that the tour groups had made it unsafe.
The Minor Forest rocks looked like ornaments now. Protruding from flat ground, they made ideal scenery for a tranquil walk. ‘Ashima’, resembling a Sani woman, was clearly the most famous of the stones to Chinese people. Numerous shops and stalls made it a heavily consumeristic affair. They didn’t bother trying to flog us anything. They knew we didn’t have a clue what it was all about.
Trying to leave was like running a gauntlet. The winding route through the building was another opportunity to be sold food. Tasting samples were pushed in front of our faces. Another electric buggy ride took us back to the monstrous tourist town where we’d started. We walked quickly to the ‘Long distance bus station’. It was almost 5pm and the bus left on the hour.
We felt sleepy on the way back. The expressways were actually a little terrifying. Hurtling through the thick fog. High drops from overpasses. It was raining heavily too. The metro was easier the second time round. It was astoundingly cheap and well organised. Nothing like the chaos of the London Underground.
We got off at Wuyi Road. There were a few ‘walking streets’ collectively known as Kunming old town. For the most part it was overrun by rampant marketing and shop fronts. The number of domestic tourists was mind boggling. Unbelievably we saw two other westerners. It didn’t seem to matter where we were. Chinese people outnumbered us by hundreds to one.
We perused for a while but it was almost 7pm so we went for dinner at Juezhengjing, a vegetarian restaurant. Comfortable and fancy, everything was vegan but the pizza. Ordering through the WeChat app actually worked this time. We ordered a spicy noodle dish, tofu and pickles, something that looked like sushi and accidentally ordered a potato dish we thought was tofu. It was expensive by our standards, £11. We felt like normal tourists, eating out till late, then walked back in the light rain. We felt thankful not to be leaving the next day. We finished off our pile of bakery treats and watched another episode of Forever.
Surly They Won't Make It 