Shilin - stone forest

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So we leave Kuyuann and head to Shilin, the home of the infamous and highly touristy "Stone Forest".

We check into the International Hostel at the gates of the forest - amazingly expensive. Another $30 night but no bowling alley - and spend the late afternoon checking out the entrance to the park and go for a wonder through the neighbouring village where our little yellow guide book had mapped out a possible back door entrance to slip into the park without having to pay the exhorbiant fees they were asking for.

The village was cool. Noone seemed to question us walking through, despite looking entirely out of place from the mud brick houses and locally dressed women. It was only the dogs that sweemed to have a problem with our presence and would alert their owners - making us feel even more self conscience of the fact we were on some kind of dodgy mission.

We stumble across the shores of a small lake that seems to be part of the park and follow it round to what was obviously a small gate and a policeman, but one that we figured would be easy to jump in the dark. So we turn around, admire the locals fishing in the lake, and head back into the village taking a few different twists and turns to stumble upon a road. hmmmm... I wonder what's down here? We walk about 30m before a guard comes running up from behind demanding to see our ticket. Naturally we claim innocence and thought that this was just part of the village. Our mistake.

Turning around, happy with our reconnaissance mission we endevour to find some food. Walking through the village again we notice that nearly all the houses are pumping out metres and metres of hand-sewn material, bags, scarves, souvenirs etc. Kids sit amongst the fabric while the sound of sewing machines spew forth into the streets. It's a regular little production site.

Around 11pm we head back to the lake with the small gate that we figure would be a safe bet for seeing the forest at night (aparrantly a fantastic experience accordording to Mark Elliot - author or our favourite lil' yellow guide book) but it seems that the guards here do not sleep and indeed at night time they now carry massive guns. Andrew looks as innocent as possible and asks the unhappy man whether we can go into the park. Apparantly not it would seem. Off to bed it is then!

DAY TWO - 21st October

We rise early and decide to sleep some more, then get up for REAL this time, had a massive breakfast (ordered too much food by mistake - who thought that a bowl of soup would come out in 2litre bowls) as we watch about 60 buses of chinese tourists head down to the gates. Holy moly this place is popular.

We go to buy our tickets - once again gob smacked at the price of things after 3 months in South East Asia - but bite the bullet as we were here and jostle through the crowds into the Shillin Forest.

Firstly we should probably explain what a stone forest actually is. Essentially it is a massive amount of limestone peaks and towers that have been pushed up through the earth over millions of years to form a 'forest' of stone as they come up like individual trees. The whole area covers about 320 square kms and there are two parks, Shilin being the main one.

The first part of the park is impecably manicured with beautiful lawns and landscape designed to bring out the best in the rock formations. The hundreds of Chinese tourists stick together in packs and follow guides that are carrying different coloured flags. We get caught up in the throngs and end up following the little narrow paths, stopping when they stop and trying to get a moment free of lemmings to take a photo without it containing at least 10 strangers in it.

We walk though the 'Minor forest" before heading into the "Grand Forest" where after a while we manage to lose the crowds and find ourselves heading through narrrow gaps in rocks and stumbling along the perimeter where we should "be alert to our safety as guards do not patrol these areas". At least this is what the signs say, but as soon as we head off down a path to one of the outer sites a guard (who looked about 14) came up on his motorbike and blocked the path claiming that we could not go there, that it was closed. Bollocks as I'd just seen another couple come from there, but he was persistant in throwing his power around and would not relent.

So turning around we follow the outer path and making note that every time we took a step off it a guard would appear out of no where - usually hiding behind a rock or a tree- and would look fiercely at us. Quite amusing really. We made a point of waving at all the security cameras too.

Beginning to tire we head back into the Grand Forest and become thoroughly lost for about an hour with no signs and seeminlgy no sense of direction. We didn't see anyone for about an hour! We actually thought maybe all the groups had finished for the day until we came across one of the major paths again and realised that we had momentarily at least escaped into an oasis of limestone.

Time to leave, we catch a bus to Kunming, the capital of the Yunnan province. Finding a very cheap place to stay ( I wish I took a photo of the shared toilet) we run into Gavin and Sinead the kiwis from Vietnam and share some beers, admiring the city around us. Again, we're blown away by the cleaniness of it all and were actually grateful for the order around us.

Aaaaaaahhhhh, we breath a sigh of relief that we have hit civilisation again.

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