Stone forest Shilin near Kunming

Shílín (石林), in English "stone forest", is an impressive karst landscape that lies in the Chinese province of Yunnan. The landscape is located about 120 km southeast of Kunming, where we were staying for a few days. Since 2007 Shilin has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage under the umbrella term “Karst Landscapes in South China”. Some parts of the fairytale stone forest are accessible to tourists and, apart from the wonderful landscape, also offer some tourist attractions such as excursions with camels, dromedaries and zebras.

However, we were primarily interested in the impressive landscape with its stone columns up to 30 meters high, which were washed out of the original continuous stone surface over the course of 270 million years.