The Zhijin Cave is like a vast underground palace, complete with a velvety moss around the first ’reception hall’ cave and sparking rare rock formations though out. It’s also China’s largest, at a gaping 173 metres wide and 150 meters tall at the cavern’s largest point.

Visitors are taken past a dense forest of glistening stalactites and stalagmites deep under the surrounding hills; the whole tunnel and cavern complex is over 12 kilometres in length. There’s a superb array of different karst formations, including one large and particularly unique example in the main cavern and unusually shaped passages and grottos which you explore in the oily semi darkness down paths created by felled stalagmites and hacked into the limestone.

As well as the caves, Guizhou province is worth visiting for its misty terrain of high altitude plateaus and craggy peaks. Walking on the provinces quiet tracks you’ll also come across some of China’s most remote and traditional villages. China’s highest waterfalls, the Huangguoshu Falls, an over and underground river complex, are nearby.

Written by  Mike Lyvers.

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