Off the beaten track

Depth of attraction

The Hou'er Sinkhole in Kaiyang county is located 76 kilometers from the provincial capital of Guiyang. As it's only one-hour drive from the airport in Guiyang, we left it as the last stop of our trip in Guizhou.

We stayed in the county seat of Kaiyang on a Saturday evening and went to the sinkhole the next morning. The site is only 8 km from the town. When we arrived there at 8 am, after having rice noodle in beef soup as our breakfast, we found that we had to wait an hour for it to open.

A park manager refused to let us in ahead of opening time, despite our pleas.

She explained that it was still too dark in the sinkhole at that moment, and the stone trail descending to the bottom of the karst funnel was slippery.

She wasn't kidding. After we walked along a stone-paved path into the sinkhole, the road passed a patch of dense wood as it gradually disappeared into a cave.