The Most Beautiful Caves in Asia

29 places in 14 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Son Doong Cave

   Vietnam · 33.3 km from Đồng Hới17.457° N 106.288° E

   

   A local man, Hồ Khanh, found the entrance in 1990 while searching for agarwood, but was put off by the roar of water and the wind blowing out of it, and later could not find it again. He relocated it in 2008 at the request of British cavers, and in April 2009 an expedition of the British Cave Research Association led by Howard Limbert surveyed the cave. They were stopped by a flowstone barrier about 60 metres high, which they named the Great Wall of Vietnam, and crossed it in 2010 to reach the end of the passage.

   Did you know? Some sections are large enough to hold an entire New York city block, skyscrapers included.

   More about Son Doong Cave →

2. 02 Mogao Caves

   People's Republic of China · 16.9 km from Dunhuang40.037° N 94.804° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Today some 735 caves survive, of which about 490 in the southern section are decorated. Together they hold around 45,000 square metres of wall paintings and some 2,400 painted clay sculptures. The murals trace changes in style across the centuries, from early figures influenced by India and Central Asia to the lavish paradise scenes, musicians and flying apsaras of the Tang dynasty, when Mogao was at its height. The most famous landmark is the nine-storey wooden façade that shelters a seated Buddha 35.5 metres tall, carved in 695.

   Did you know? Paul Pelliot followed in 1908 and took around 10,000 documents for about £90.

   More about Mogao Caves →

3. 03 Tam Cốc-Bích Động

   Vietnam · 7.3 km from Ninh Bình20.218° N 105.916° E

   

   Tam Cốc was the first boat route developed in the province and remains its oldest. Rowers, many of them local women, take visitors out from the landing and famously often row with their feet. The round trip takes around two hours, and the scenery shifts with the farming year: green paddy in the growing season, gold before the harvest and silvery water once the fields are flooded.

   Did you know? Nguyễn Nghiễm, who named Bích Động in 1773, was the father of Nguyễn Du, Vietnam's most celebrated classical poet.

   More about Tam Cốc-Bích Động →

4. 04 Jeita Grotto

   Lebanon · 14.5 km from Beirut33.944° N 35.641° E

   

   The lower cave entered modern history in 1836, when the American missionary William Thomson walked some fifty metres in, fired his gun and heard from the echoes that the cavern ran far into the mountain. In 1873–1874 engineers of the Beirut Water Company pushed more than a kilometre upstream and left their names on a pillar, and a bottle with their record sealed by lime on top of a stalagmite. Lebanese cavers of the Spéléo Club du Liban carried the exploration further from the 1950s, and in 1958 they found the upper galleries.

   Did you know? The spring flowing out of the lower cave supplies drinking water to roughly one and a half million people in and around Beirut.

   More about Jeita Grotto →

5. 05 Pak Ou Caves

   Laos · 19.6 km from Luang Prabang20.049° N 102.210° E

   

   What makes the caves remarkable is what they hold. Hundreds of small Buddha figures, most of them carved in wood, stand crowded on ledges and shelves along the rock walls, many worn, cracked or missing pieces. The figures show the Buddha in many different postures: seated in meditation, teaching, walking, sheltered by the naga, calling for rain, and lying down at the moment of passing into nirvana. Some visitors call the site the cave of a thousand Buddhas. The walls also carry rock art, which a 2018 study in the journal Archaeological Research in Asia recorded and analysed.

   Did you know? The oldest images, painted in red, show domesticated buffalo, human figures and handprints, similar to rock art at other highland sites in Southeast Asia.

   More about Pak Ou Caves →

6. 06 Yungang Grottoes

   People's Republic of China · 15.3 km from Datong40.110° N 113.122° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The Northern Wei rulers were the Tuoba, a clan of steppe origin whom the Han Chinese population they governed regarded as northern outsiders. Sponsoring an enormous, expensive religious monument that literally wore their faces was a calculated move to assert that their rule was sanctioned by something bigger than conquest. The scale backs up the ambition: over 51,000 Buddha statues were eventually carved across the site between 460 and 525 CE, by a workforce numbering in the thousands, over roughly forty years of continuous digging.

   Did you know? The famous open-air Buddha of Cave 20 was originally enclosed inside a cave; its front wall collapsed, most likely in a powerful earthquake that struck the Datong basin in 512.

   More about Yungang Grottoes →

7. 07 Paradise Cave (Thiên Đường)

   Vietnam17.520° N 106.223° E

   

   The name refers to the decoration. The passages are huge — up to 72 m high and 150 m wide — and filled with stalactites and stalagmites, columns, curtains and terraces of calcite. The formations are bigger and more elaborate than those of Phong Nha, and in the shaded light the chambers look like underground cathedrals.

   Did you know? Unlike nearby Phong Nha Cave, which is threaded by an underground river, Paradise Cave is a dry cave with no river running through it.

   More about Paradise Cave (Thiên Đường) →

8. 08 Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka

   India22.939° N 77.614° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   More than 750 shelters are spread across seven hills, with the largest clusters on Bhimbetka hill itself and on Lakha Juar. The earliest images are linear figures; later artists worked in red, white and yellow, and later still with hematite, manganese oxide and charcoal. The scenes show hunters with barbed spears and bows, communal dances, mothers with children, burials and battles, and a crowded bestiary of deer, antelope, wild cattle, rhinoceros, sloth bears, wolves, monkeys, fish, turtles and peafowl. One panel, nicknamed Zoo Rock, gathers elephants, barasingha, bison and deer; another shows a peacock beside a snake and the sun. In the later periods riders appear on horses and elephants.

   Did you know? The first written mention, by a British official in 1888, took Bhimbetka for a Buddhist site, based on what local Adivasi communities told him.

   More about Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka →

9. 09 Phraya Nakhon Cave

   Thailand12.197° N 100.011° E

   

   The cave takes its name from a ruler of Nakhon Si Thammarat, although which Phraya Nakhon is meant remains uncertain. Tradition offers two versions: one from the reign of King Narai in the seventeenth century, another from the time of King Rama I, when a governor sheltering from a storm on the way back to his city is said to have found the cave. Along the path there is a brick-lined well about 4 metres deep, known as Phraya Nakhon's Well and attributed to him. Several kings came here afterwards — Rama IV recorded a visit, and Rama V came more than once between 1863 and 1890 — and the initials of Rama V and Rama VII are carved into the rock.

   Did you know? The design of the Kuha Karuhas Pavilion is credited to a member of the royal family, Prince Prap Porapak, rather than to an ordinary court builder.

   More about Phraya Nakhon Cave →

10. 10 Rosh HaNikra grottoes

    Israel · 32.3 km from Haifa33.093° N 35.105° E

    

    The headland has been a boundary and a passage for millennia. The Book of Maccabees mentions the "Ladder of Tyre" in this area as a northern border, and Josephus described the cape as the limit of Acre's territory. In 1941 and 1942, during the Second World War, South African and New Zealand army engineers cut railway tunnels through the cliff to carry a line linking Haifa with Beirut, and with it the rail networks of Egypt, Lebanon and beyond. In 1948 Palmach fighters blew up the bridge between the tunnels to stop arms reaching Lebanese forces, and the line was never restored. In 1949 Israel and Lebanon signed their armistice agreement here. The tunnel towards Lebanon remains sealed.

    Did you know? According to legend, the moaning heard in one grotto, the 'Cave of Sighs', is a bride from Acre, thrown into the sea when her horse slipped on the cliff path.

    More about Rosh HaNikra grottoes →

11. 11 Ali-Sadr Cave

    Iran35.302° N 48.304° E

    

    The limestone is Jurassic, and the entrance lies high, at nearly 2,000 metres above sea level, beside the village of Ali Sadr. Villagers had known the cave for a long time and even diverted surplus water into it to use as a reservoir, which raised the water level so high that the entrance was nearly blocked. After an earthquake in 1957 cut off the stream that fed it, the water fell back, and in 1963 fourteen members of the Hamadan mountaineering association made the first organised exploration, crossing the lake with their own equipment.

    Did you know? The water is too hard and lime-rich to drink, yet its acidity is almost exactly neutral.

    More about Ali-Sadr Cave →

12. 12 Reed Flute Cave

    People's Republic of China · 2.5 km from Guilin25.304° N 110.276° E

    

    The formations have their own folklore on top of that. One tall stalactite is identified by local legend as the magic staff of the Dragon King, later taken and turned into a weapon by Sun Wukong, the Monkey King of Journey to the West — a detail that turns a geology stop into a scene from one of China's most famous stories.

    Did you know? Geologists describe the cave as the bed of an ancient underground lake some 700,000 years ago.

    More about Reed Flute Cave →

13. 13 Manjanggul and Gimnyeonggul Lava Tubes

    South Korea · 23.1 km from Jeju33.528° N 126.770° E

    

    The inside of the tube still records how the lava moved. Shelves along the walls mark levels where the flow stood for a while. Ropy flowstone covers the floor, lava stalactites drip from the ceiling, and here and there sit lava rafts, blocks of solidified crust that the flow carried along and dropped. The best-known feature is a lava column about 7.6 m high, formed where molten rock poured through a hole in the roof and piled up on the floor. It is described as the largest known anywhere. For a lava tube, Manjanggul is unusually well preserved, and that is what gives it its scientific value.

    Did you know? The cave was first explored in 1946 by Bu Jong-hyu, a teacher at the Gimnyeong primary school, who led his pupils inside, measured it and gave it its name.

    More about Manjanggul and Gimnyeonggul Lava Tubes →

14. 14 Tham Kong Lo

    Laos17.956° N 104.761° E

    

    Visitors make the crossing by boat along the underground river, and on the way they see stalactites and other limestone formations in the huge passage. The cave has been described as one of the geological wonders of Southeast Asia, and a pool inside that glows a vivid emerald green is held sacred by local people. In recent years villagers have set up stalls near the entrance to serve the growing number of travellers.

    Did you know? A French speleological expedition explored and mapped the cave in 1994, when it was known as Tham Nam Hin Bun.

    More about Tham Kong Lo →

15. 15 Maijishan Grottoes

    People's Republic of China · 29.1 km from Tianshui34.350° N 106.006° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Work on the site began during the short-lived Later Qin dynasty (384–417 CE) and never really stopped: successive dynasties — Northern Wei, Western Wei, Northern Zhou, Sui, Tang, Song, Ming, Qing — kept adding, repairing and repainting for more than 1,600 years, making Maijishan less a single monument than a continuously updated project spanning most of imperial Chinese history.

    Did you know? The caves are cut into a cliff of purplish-red sandstone at heights of roughly 30 to 80 metres above the ground.

    More about Maijishan Grottoes →

16. 16 Kungur Ice Cave

    Russia · 3.2 km from Kungur57.440° N 57.007° E

    

    The cave has a long written history. In 1703, on the orders of Peter the Great, the Siberian cartographer Semyon Remezov came to map the Kungur district and drew the first plan of the cave, noting crosses and an icon left inside. Vasily Tatishchev visited in the 1720s and 1730s and correctly explained how the voids had formed, rejecting the local belief that a giant beast had dug them. Local tradition holds that early Russian settlers sheltered here from raids and frost, and remains of settlements of the 7th–9th centuries have been found on the Ice Mountain above.

    Did you know? The tallest organ pipe, in the Ethereal Grotto, rises about 22 metres; in all some 146 such shafts pierce the cave roof.

    More about Kungur Ice Cave →

17. 17 Avshalom Cave

    Israel · 17.5 km from Jerusalem31.756° N 35.023° E

    

    The cave lies on the western slope of Mount Ye'ela, near the Sorek valley that gives it its scientific name, about 385 metres above sea level. The limestone here began to be dissolved and redeposited millions of years ago, and some of the formations in the chamber have been dated to more than 300,000 years. Because temperature and humidity inside stay constant through the year, the layered growth of the speleothems has preserved an unusually detailed record of past rainfall and climate.

    Did you know? The opening blasted by the quarry in 1968 was only about 60 by 60 centimetres, just wide enough for the first two workers to squeeze through.

    More about Avshalom Cave →

18. 18 Barabar Caves

    India · 23.6 km from Gaya25.005° N 85.063° E

    

    The caves belong to the Maurya Empire of the 3rd century BCE. Four are cut into Barabar Hill and three more into neighbouring Nagarjuni Hill, about a mile and a half away. Inscriptions in Brahmi script record that the emperor Ashoka, under his title Piyadasi, gave several of them to the Ajivikas, an ascetic movement contemporary with early Buddhism and Jainism that has since vanished; one inscription is dated to the twelfth year of his reign. His grandson Dasaratha later dedicated the Nagarjuni caves to the same community.

    Did you know? Inscriptions record that Emperor Ashoka granted several of the caves to the Ajivikas, an ascetic sect that later disappeared.

    More about Barabar Caves →

19. 19 Hang Én (swift cave)

    Vietnam · 32.3 km from Đồng Hới17.435° N 106.300° E

    

    The name means "swift cave", after the birds that nest by the thousands on its ceiling and stream in and out of its mouths. The Arem, a small forest people, knew the cave for generations: they sheltered in it on their seasonal journeys and climbed its walls on ladders of branches and vines to take swifts, an important part of their diet. The outside world learned of it only around 1990, when Ho Khanh, a local man searching the forest for fragrant wood, came upon it. In 1994 a joint British and Vietnamese caving expedition surveyed and mapped it.

    Did you know? The main passage of Hang Én runs for about 1.6 km straight through a limestone mountain.

    More about Hang Én (swift cave) →

20. 20 Mustang Caves

    Nepal28.930° N 83.910° E

    

    Archaeologists have found that the caves served different purposes over a very long span. The oldest were used as burial chambers from as early as about 1000 BC. Around the 10th century, when the region seems to have been fought over repeatedly, families moved into the caves as living quarters, valuing safety over convenience, and by the 15th century many had become places of meditation.

    Did you know? In places the Kali Gandaki gorge below the caves is deeper than Arizona's Grand Canyon.

    More about Mustang Caves →

21. 21 Köw Ata

    Turkmenistan38.300° N 57.519° E

    

    The lake measures around 75–80 metres in length and between 8 and 23 metres across, with an average depth of about 10 metres and as much as 15 metres at its deepest; it is often described as the largest underground lake of its kind in the former Soviet Union. The water is heavily mineralised, carrying sulphur, iodine, magnesium, potassium, sodium and other elements; the lake drains into a sulphur-rich spring. The cave itself varies from 12 to 50 metres in width, and the lake lies some 55 metres below the surface. Bats roost in the upper vaults, and around fifty species of invertebrates have been recorded in the cave.

    Did you know? The cave has five entrances, but stairs lead down from only one of them, and no daylight reaches the lake.

    More about Köw Ata →

22. 22 Pindaya Caves

    Myanmar20.925° N 96.651° E

    

    What scholars single out is not the quantity but the range. Nowhere else in the country shows such variety in the images themselves and in the carved thrones and backdrops around them. About seventy figures stand apart altogether: late-18th-century Buddhas of the Bhisakkaguru type, the healing Buddha, holding a seed in the upturned right palm and with a treatment of hair, face and robe unlike other Burmese images. The historian Than Tun, who studied Pindaya in depth, took them as a sign that the cave once served a Mahayana cult, which is unusual in a Theravada country.

    Did you know? The bronze bell at the southern entrance weighs 400 viss, about 654 kg, according to its barely legible inscription of 1842.

    More about Pindaya Caves →

23. 23 Furong Cave, Wulong

    People's Republic of China29.229° N 107.903° E

    

    The cave was found by local farmers in 1993 and opened to visitors the following year. Joint Chinese, British and American caving expeditions in 1994, 1996 and 2001 then mapped the wider system of passages and the underground river that drains the surrounding plateau. The limestone it is cut into was laid down in the Cambrian and Ordovician periods, around half a billion years ago. One of the best-known formations is a giant flowstone "stone waterfall" more than 20 metres across, with coral-like growths up to 120 centimetres long spreading from its foot. A side passage at the eastern end, known for its antler-like gypsum helictites, has been sealed off permanently to protect it.

    Did you know? The great stone waterfall spans two faces, measuring about 16 and 21 metres, with coral-like growths up to 120 centimetres long.

    More about Furong Cave, Wulong →

24. 24 Huashan Rock Paintings, Ningming

    People's Republic of China22.248° N 107.042° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The pictures were painted between roughly the Warring States period and the Eastern Han, some 1,800 to 2,500 years ago, by the Luo Yue, the people of the Zuo River valley who are regarded as ancestors of the Zhuang and of peoples now living in northern Vietnam. Archaeologists dated them partly by the objects they show: the drums, bells and ring-pommelled knives belong to types used in that period, and radiocarbon dates from calcite deposits that formed over the paint point to the same era. The pigment is ground haematite mixed with animal glue or blood, laid on as flat silhouettes without faces.

    Did you know? Of nearly 1,950 images on the Huashan cliff, about 1,556 are human figures, arranged in some 110 separate groups.

    More about Huashan Rock Paintings, Ningming →

25. 25 Saddan Cave

    Myanmar · 16.3 km from Hpa-An16.740° N 97.718° E

    

    The cave runs for roughly 800 metres from one side of the karst to the other. The entrance chamber alone is about 107 metres long and up to 40 metres wide, and local writers describe Saddan as the longest cave in Kayin State with a narrow entrance. A path leads through the main passage, past dripstone formations, one of which is known as the Stone Pillar of the King of Elephants, and past colonies of thousands of bats. At the far end the passage opens onto a lake at the foot of the cliffs; from there wooden canoes return through a second, much lower river cave, about 110 metres long and 3 metres high, that links two lakes on opposite sides of the mountain.

    Did you know? The name means royal elephant, and two stone elephants stand at the foot of the stairway leading up to the entrance.

    More about Saddan Cave →

26. 26 Jomblang Cave

    Indonesia · 39.9 km from Yogyakarta City8.028° S 110.638° E

    

    Visitors go down the way cavers do: on ropes, lowered more than 50 metres into the shaft with the operators' vertical-caving gear. From the bottom a sloping passage leads about 270 metres to the foot of a second opening, Luweng Grubug, where the roof lies about 90 metres overhead. Around midday on a bright day, sunlight falls through that opening in a single column, strikes a mound of flowstone and lights the drifting mist and dripping water around it. Locals call it cahaya surga, the "light of heaven". The beam usually appears only between about 11 a.m. and noon, so descents are timed for it. Photographers come specifically for it.

    Did you know? As early as 1993 the International Union of Speleology proposed the Gunung Sewu karst for World Heritage status because of its caves and underground rivers.

    More about Jomblang Cave →

27. 27 Khao Luang cave

    Thailand · 2.6 km from Phetchaburi13.135° N 99.933° E

    

    From the foot of the hill a stairway climbs to the entrance, and from there steps lead down into a sequence of connected chambers. The largest is lit almost entirely by the natural skylights in its ceiling; the light moves across the floor as the day goes on, picking out stalactites and the textured, damp walls. The cave has long been a place of worship rather than a natural curiosity alone. Somewhere between 170 and 180 Buddha images, by different counts, stand along its walls and in its chambers, together with small stupas and a replica of the Buddha's footprint.

    Did you know? Sunthorn Phu, the most celebrated poet of the early Bangkok era, mentioned the cave in his travel poem Nirat Mueang Phet.

    More about Khao Luang cave →

28. 28 Phong Nha Cave

    Vietnam · 35.5 km from Đồng Hới17.582° N 106.282° E

    

    The cave is also a historical site. Long before the area came under Vietnamese rule, it belonged to the Champa kingdom, and one of the chambers, Bi Ky, holds a Cham inscription carved on a rock slab along with terracotta votive pieces dating from around the 9th century. Some scholars think the grotto served as a Cham place of worship between the 9th and 11th centuries. About a kilometre away and 200 metres up the cliff is Tien Son Cave, found by chance in 1935 and nearly a kilometre long, with dry galleries rich in formations.

    Did you know? It is one of the landscapes cast on the Nine Dynastic Urns of the Nguyễn emperors in the citadel of Huế.

    More about Phong Nha Cave →

29. 29 Orda Cave

    Russia · 28.4 km from Kungur57.182° N 56.888° E

    

    The dry part, only about 300 metres long, is itself striking: the Crystal Grotto, the Ice Lake, and the chamber called the Ice Palace, where the Main and Warm lakes are the entrances to the flooded world. Beyond them, the main galleries are named after the cities of the cavers who first explored them — Chelyabinsk, Krasnoyarsk, Moscow and Sverdlovsk passages. The water is extraordinarily clear, around 4 °C, and divers report visibility of more than forty metres.

    Did you know? It is often described as the largest underwater gypsum cave in the world, and it ranks about 21st by length among the world's gypsum caves.

    More about Orda Cave →