Xiaozhai Tiankeng

My Chinese friend and master dumpling maker Jianping had suggested some places I should visit as I made my way to southern China.  She suggested a place and accidently helped me find a place I had been searching for.

I knew the deepest pit cave was somewhere in China but I couldn’t find anything when searching for it.  Jianping had suggested a popular sinkhole and gorge near Wulong.  Tiankeng means “Heavenly Pit” so the name is a little generic and, while trying to locate it on a map, I found another Tiankeng that matched the place I had been searching for.

Although it may look like a pit cave from above, sinkholes are formed differently and that’s why my hunt for the deepest pit cave came up empty.  Now that I knew where it was and that it wasn’t far off my route I had to make it happen.

This sinkhole is just off a highway but not visible from it.  Although this place was only “discovered” in 1994 it has long been known by locals.  However, it isn’t very well-known by the closest cities and this was a very difficult place to get to.  I inched myself closer and closer and was amazed that no one had ever heard of this place.  I was feeling defeated and would have never found it without a huge help from Jianping.   She recommended I take a 2 hour bus ride from the city of Enshi up to a village named Sanjiabao that I couldn’t even find on in the Maps.Me app or Google Maps.  It took a while but the ladies at the bus terminal were very helpful and managed to get me there and I had finally reached a place that had heard of Xiaozhai Tiankeng.

I hopped on the next bus north and the driver dropped me off on the side of the highway to a place that almost seemed abandoned.  The massive parking lot was almost entirely empty and the ticket office was locked.  A short time later a young and very pregnant lady came up and kindly unlocked the office for me and sold me a ticket.

This is the wold’s deepest sinkhole at 662m deep with a diameter or 626m in the upper bowl and the path to the bottom has 2,666 steps.  I really enjoyed visiting this place.  There are no cable cars or elevators here so it felt very private.  I saw maybe a dozen people the whole time I was there and it was nice to sit there at the bottom in solitude to properly appreciate this impressive formation.  The river at the bottom doesn’t flow into it from above but instead comes from underground and flows further underground into a cave.

The time to ponder was short-lived because I had to get back up to the office to get my backpack before the pregnant lady went home.  I ended up missing the last bus of the day back to Enshi but the driver that brought me back to Sanjiaoba was very kind and helped me get a cheap room inside the bus terminal compound that I’m fairly certain is where some drivers usually stay if needed.  This same driver was going to be driving the earliest bus to Enshi the next morning so this was perfect.  He even knocked on my door when I wasn’t on the bus half and hour before it was scheduled to leave.  I handed the driver my room key and he stuck me in the front seat, which was awesome because way at the back of the bus, a guy was puking the entire journey back to Enshi.  Eww...

Travelling by Train in China isn’t hard but travelling by bus as a foreigner is complicated because there is very little information online in English and tickets have to be purchased in person at the terminal.  Once I made it back to Enshi, I ended up buying a ticket part-way to my destination, as per the recommendations of workers at the terminal, but I was then told the remaining transfer would have to be the next morning.  I’m not sure why they were so reluctant to sell me a direct route but there was a very short window to catch the next bus and even the map on the Chinese ticket website suggested the bus left from a different terminal so that may have been why.  However, the lady eventually felt sorry for me and sold me a direct ticket for the bus that was leaving right away from that terminal.  Success!