Handpicked experience · Guilin
Guilin, China
Hills that are what the rain left behind, ink graffiti written on a cave wall in the year 792, and a stalactite a general is said to have cut through with one stroke.
For centuries the scenery of Guilin has been called 'the most magnificent under heaven'
Take in the incredible scenery of beautiful Guangxi Province.
This tour will introduce you to the rolling green mountains, elegant waterways, and majestic caves of Guilin.
Explore the amazing Li River and take in the incredible Elephant Trunk Hill from the water.
Three sites close enough together to see properly in one day
A guide and vehicle used by your party alone
Riverside walking where the karst meets the water
The city and its karst towers seen from the top of Fubo Hill
A morning or afternoon start, whichever suits
A private eight-hour day around Guilin's three closest landmarks — Elephant Trunk Hill on the Li River, Reed Flute Cave in the hills behind the city, and the climb up Fubo Hill — with your own guide and vehicle and a choice of morning or afternoon start.
Driving between sites and walking at each. There are a lot of steps: the cave is a long descending loop on wet stone, and Fubo Hill is a staircase to the top. The three sites sit close together, so the day is unhurried rather than packed.
The peaks around Guilin are limestone laid down under a warm shallow sea some three hundred million years ago. Rain, which is faintly acidic, has been dissolving that rock ever since, cutting down through the joints and leaving the harder cores standing as isolated towers. What looks like a landscape of hills is really a landscape of holes — the hills are what the water did not take. Fossils of marine animals turn up in the stone at eye level, several hundred metres above any sea.
Reed Flute Cave takes its name from the reeds at its mouth, which were cut to make flutes. Inside are more than seventy inscriptions written in ink on the cave walls by visitors, the earliest dated to 792. People were coming here to look at the formations, and to write about having done so, twelve centuries ago. The cave was then largely forgotten until 1940, when refugees sheltering from air raids rediscovered the passages.
Elephant Trunk Hill is a rock arch that reads, unmistakably, as an elephant lowering its trunk into the river. Local legend makes it a celestial animal that stayed behind to help farmers and was punished by being turned to stone — the small Ming pagoda on its back is the hilt of the sword that pinned it there. The opening under the trunk is called Water Moon Cave, because the moon reflected in the water beneath the arch appears to float inside it.
Fubo Hill is named for a Han-dynasty general. In a cave at its foot hangs a stalactite that stops a few centimetres short of the ground, which the story says he cut through with a single stroke of his sword. Nearby the cliff is carved with more than two hundred Buddhist figures, most of them Tang and Song work, and worn but legible.
Guilin means cassia forest, after the sweet osmanthus trees planted throughout the city. In autumn they flower and the whole place smells of them. The flowers are collected for tea and wine.
Wear grippy shoes. The cave is humid and the paths inside stay wet year-round, and the coloured lighting there is not to everyone's taste. Entry tickets for the sites are arranged separately from the tour.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
Not far in distance, but heavy on steps. Reed Flute Cave is a long loop on damp stone and Fubo Hill is climbed by staircase; between sites you are in the vehicle.
Because the rock between them has dissolved. Slightly acidic rain has been eating into the limestone along its joints for millions of years, and the towers are the parts that resisted.
The earliest dated inscription is from 792, and there are more than seventy in total. They are ink on rock, left by visitors who came for exactly the reason you are coming.
A small Ming structure. The story attached to it says the hill is a celestial elephant turned to stone, and the pagoda is the hilt of the sword driven into its back.
A column hanging a few centimetres clear of the cave floor, traditionally said to have been sliced through by a Han general testing his sword. The same cliff carries over two hundred Buddhist carvings.
It means cassia forest, after the sweet osmanthus trees throughout the city. They flower in autumn, scent the whole place, and are picked for tea and wine.
No — the tour covers the guide, the vehicle and water. Tickets for the three sites are handled separately.