ha giang lung khuy hills ha giang lung khuy hills

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ha giang
Lung Khuy Cave Trek

Lung Khuy Cave Trek

The village nearby is called Lung Khuy. It’s the village that gave the caves the name. It is best to go here early in the morning before other people. We can buy supplies like drinks / snacks in the village as is usually the case. To the caves and back is around 4km, completed in around 1.5 hours.

Morning ascent

Setting off to the cave, we have 2km ahead of us with many steps to climb. At first the grade is quite small and the path quite wide. There are farmers in the area and sometimes we may see one passing with their animals or out attending to their plant crops.

The gradient starts to get a little more serious as we start to hug the hillside to the left. The path for the rest of the trek is just over 1m wide - for the most part in good condition. As we trek on this path carved into the hillside it is a wonder to see people farming the sides with such steep gradients. Because of this, corn is usually grown instead of rice and this is what we see.

Trekking along, the foliage next to us gets thicker and once or twice we enter “green tunnels” which are very beautiful. As we go higher, we start to see greater views of the valley below. Then we get to a lot of steps. We can see our destination already, but it is much higher up, so on we go…

The steps

The last sets of steps are quite steep and harder to climb. Their condition in places is not the best though and this is one of the reasons we do this trek early. Passing people coming the other way with no hand rails is slow and we always plan to get as much into the day as possible.

Finally we get to the top. There is a moderately sized terraced area. There is a small shop / kiosk selling water and ice creams. Its small because all the items for sale must be brought up by person hauling it up there. To the left is the entrance to the cave. We have made it at last.

The caves

We have a whole page about the caves themselves and a little about their history that you can read here.


ha giang lung khuy trek farmer ha giang lung khuy trek farmer

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Near the start of our trek we meet a farmer taking their cows and goats home after feeding them in the green areas.
ha giang lung khuy fires ha giang lung khuy fires

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Burning the grasses that were left to grow in between harvests. This acts as a natural fertiliser to put back in to the ground for the next crop of corn.
ha giang lung khuy steps ha giang lung khuy steps

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Some of the many steps to the top. The path is in actually quite good condition and is actually covered in greenery in places.
ha giang lung khuy trek path ha giang lung khuy trek path

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Here we see the path winding around the hillside. This is on the way back, so downhill all the way!"