A long walk on the wild side

Forest adventure

I found a wonderful aerial picture of Maolan karst cones online and presented it to the innkeeper.

"You can't go there," the innkeeper told me. "The viewing platform has been closed due to concerns that too many visitors could cause geological damage."

Despite our disappointment, we figured out an alternative: a seven-hour trek through the "funnel forest". It is named such because it has grown along an eroded funnel, a typical example of karst topography.

Initially, due to our pitiful level of outdoorsmanship, we were reluctant to venture in.

However, I had noted the tourism motto, which appeared throughout the nature reserve: "If you don't do it now, you won't do it in your lifetime."

Three of our group finally made the decision to venture into the forest. We had become the elite to really approach "the world's most sublime, grotesque, and unique views".

When we told the innkeeper, he replied with a knowing smile: "Great. Bear Grylls went there."

The next morning, the most senior of the He clan took over from his grandson, assuming the role of trek guide.

Upon seeing our heavy backpacks full of snacks, bread, beverages and energy bars, he let out a laugh.

All he packed was three lollipops and a bottle of water.

Soon after we set off, I realized I was wearing the wrong type of shoes and the wrong trousers.

Rain came and went three times, and before I actually managed to climb over the first mountain, I had already been drenched. I was a walking mixture of mud and water.

Our guide, in his 50s, behaved like a botanist, introducing the locally specific plants to us, but I was hardly in the mood to learn about the fauna and flora. In this weather, every step sunk into the muddy, sucking ground. Every log in front of us, and every rock we had to clamber over was an energy-sapping physical challenge.

"One can never reach those places without strong willpower," I murmured, reciting that millennium-old line, over and over again.

Sinkholes and entrances to underground rivers kept popping up along our route. Thinking of them, leading to an unknown world, I began to appreciate the road that I can control even more.

One of my teammates found a tree that had appeared in Grylls' show. But most of the time, we were just wandering in a green chaos without any obvious landmarks.