After visiting Kunming’s Western Hills, our next nature outing was to Stone Forest (石林, shilin), a UNESCO World Heritage Site. About a 90 minutes drive outside of Kunming, the park is full of limestone structures sticking out of the ground, somewhat like massive stalagmites.
There were a decent amount of tourists around the most popular parts of the park. But if you skip the shuttle buses and venture even just a 10 minute walk away from the main road, it immediately felt like we had park mostly to ourselves. I’m not sure if it was the time of year we went (at the end of December) or if generally the Stone Forest has lost its shine over the years, but it was pretty quiet overall and didn’t feel like a hugely popular place to visit like the Western Hills was.
Before I visited this park I had seen some of the pictures, and while the rocks sticking out of the ground look cool, I’ll admit it did seem a bit boring - you see some rocks and then go home. But actually the Stone Forest was one of the highlights of my trip. At the end of the day, it is just rocks. But I think the fun of being able to explore the park, and be mostly alone in nature for most of the day felt really healing for me.
Our first adventure was through a rock maze. There were occasional sign posts, but otherwise you just had to hope that you were heading in the right direction. One group we passed were laughing how they had gotten completely lost. The path was all steps carved out of rock, but with little options here and there to diverge from the trail and check out a little mini cave or see what was inside of a hole.
Randomly throughout the maze, there were also little rock tables and chairs where you could sit down and have lunch. I got the impression that maybe these were heavily used when the area was more popular (or at a more popular time of year than now) but the maze overall was pretty quiet and we didn’t bump into too many people.
Occasionally there would be rocks with names attached to them, and we had to squint and try and imagine what it was supposed to look like.
Then we started to approach the Wangfeng Pavilion. We had some tourists pass by us, asking if we knew the direction to the exit. We were like “yeah sure, it’s back the direction we came from” and we sent them on their way. Little did we know, that most people don’t actually explore the whole maze, and beyond the pavilion is another exit. So we inadvertently sent them in the completely wrong direction (sorry!)
There were plenty of people clustered up at the pavilion. From here you can get a good view of the Stone Forest from above.
Once you exit the maze, you’ll come across the most iconic spot in the forest. The words “Stone forest” are carved into the rock in Chinese.
I also spotted this little Oriental magpie. His wings were tipped blue! I had never seen one before, but apparently they are in Japan as well.
Once we snapped some pics, we headed back into the Stone Forest, but while previously we had come from the left path (which goes to the Pavilion) we headed right instead. This takes you to the “Sword Peak Pond”.
There was another rest spot along the way. The English had “BETTER TO REST HERE FOR A WHILE” written on it. Is it just me, or does it give Dark Souls vibes? Like a large boss battle is up ahead or something.
So we got to the lake, and were trying to figure out which rock was the sword, only to find that the sword actually toppled in an earthquake and is no longer there! Oops. The lake was pretty, but with the lack of sign posting we accidentally looped around it twice before we figured out where we wanted to go next.
After exiting the lake area, we found ourselves near the loop road used by the shuttle buses.
From the road, we could see the “mushroom forest” in the distance. This was the southernmost point on the map so we had wanted to check it out.
This part was the highlight for me. It was really quiet - we only passed by a couple of people - and it just felt really serene and peaceful.
The mushroom shape comes from the rock in the middle bit being softer than the top bit, so then it erodes away, leaving a mushroom-looking rock.
Once we visited the mushroom field, we headed back to the shuttle bus road and took a right turn. If you walk all the way along it, you will end up back at the entrance to the park. Along the way, there are options to jump off the road either on the left or right, and enter little subsections of the park.
Finally we stopped by the Ashima rock. This rock was very popular, to the point where there was a food and drinks shop directly behind of it. I get the impression that tour buses tend to hit here, the “stone forest” sign and the pagoda as a trio.
Now the reason why this is popular is that Ashima is the heroine of a famous Chinese story, where she was kidnapped, forced to marry a guy, but then freed by her true love. However she died in a flood and turned into this rock.
Looking at the rock, you’d think that she’s facing towards the right, and has a really big chin, but actually she’s looking towards the left, and has a large bamboo basket on her back. I can’t really see it, to be honest.
And that was it for the Stone Forest! Outside the park entrance is also a stone museum, which you can enter for free with your park ticket. Unfortunately we ran out of time for this one.
Access and general info
If you come from Kunming city, the Stone Forest is about a 90 minute drive. We stayed at a hotel in Mile city the night before, which is 60 minutes away from Stone Forest. In hindsight, I would recommend staying in Kunming unless you are specifically interested in Mile as well, as switching hotels every night can get quite tiring.
There are bus and train options to get to Stone Forest, but we opted to get a DiDi there and back to save time. Our DiDi driver on the way there wasn’t really happy to take us - either he’s just grumpy normally, or because it’s taking him out of the city and into a less populated area. Actually he wanted us to cancel the DiDi, and pay him in cash instead. My partner and his brother did a lot of talking back and forth with the guy but they managed to sort things out (thanks!).
I’m not sure how toll roads are calculated in other countries’ taxi apps, but in China, the passenger and the driver have to discuss whether to take the toll road or not, and the driver will manually input the toll cost into the DiDi app. We took the regular roads in both directions, which saved us a bit of money (well, it was more the driver didn’t want to take the toll road!) but probably added another 20 minutes to the journey.
There are options to also just hire a driver for the whole day, who will be ready to drive you back once you are done. If I did this trip again, I would go for this option if you can find one to hire, as in the end the costs weren’t exorbitantly higher than hiring separate DiDis, and you can be more confident you can find someone willing to take you.
Once you arrive at the park, you’ll buy your admission tickets. From the visitor centre where you buy the tickets, to the park’s entrance is probably separated by about 2km. (Not sure why they did that). You’ll need to pay extra to get on a shuttle bus to get to the actual entrance, but we skipped that and decided to walk. On the way back, there is an exit to the main road next to the stone museum, so you can cut out through there instead of walking all the way back to the visitor centre.
Not that I want this site to turn into a public toilet review blog, but the Stone Forest toilets were probably some of the cleanest I saw on my entire China trip! Although even then, they still don’t have toilet paper, so remember to bring your own.
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