saturday 13th September - day 24  -zhangjajie

So we are all mountained out from yesterday and our train to Kunming is at 4pm so we decide just to go up to 'yellow dragon cave' (huanglong dong) today. We walk down to the centre and get on the no1 bus straight to the cave. its 100rmb in and we are ushered through the entrance with 50 odd Chinese and a tour guide screeching into her megaphone. We let everyone pass us (which they were all pushing to do so anyhow) so we can hang back away from the tour guide.

The cave takes its name from a legend of a dragon that lived inside the cave, covers 100,000 sq metres and the longest cave in Asia. The cave leads through a series of passageways and subterranean chambers until we come to brightly lit caverns which illuminate hundreds of strange stalagmites. The stalagmites are formed from the group, upwards from dripping water and limestone deposits over millions of years - they remind me of when you are a kid and with wet sand you drip it to make pointy sand like pillars.

The cavern leads down to the subterranean river - which is nearly 3,000 metres long and home to a load of salamanders - where we board a boat and drift through the vast passageways and caverns. We dock and follow the path into two further caverns which are again garishly lit by coloured lamps and full of stalagmites and stalactites. There’s even a 40ft small waterfall, that drops straight from the centre of one of the caves, We spend about 2 hours at the caves - there’s quite a few steep stairways too1 - buy some crap once we exit from the stalls outside and get the no1 back to the hostel.

We grab some rice before we leave and get the no2 bus back to the centre and take the mini bus to the train station. Its 20hrs to Kunming and we both sleep most of the way after putting ourselves in a biscuit coma.