With the distance of 80 kilometers away from the county seat, the Immortal Cave is located in the field of Zanagela Village in Shangri-la. This cave is said to be one of the largest karst caves in Shangri-la County. Therefore, many foreign students are attracted to enjoy the cave view when they learn Mandarin in the city of Kunming. They said the entrance of this cave is as high as ten meters. The real depth of the cave is not ascertained but tourists can reach two or three kilometers smoothly.
When stepping into the cave, you can see the large and high precipice, in which there is a cave entrance with the shape of house. It is said the cave is connected with the down part of the main cave. Since there are numerous twists and turns, you can reach another entrance of the cave by taking seven says. Therefore the tourists seldom go through this cave and only travel around in the main cave. The front cave of the main cave is not dark but as spacious as can contain several hundred people.
In the cave, there is a natural statue of Maitreya which is named due to the stalactite with the shape of Maitreya Buddha. What you can see besides the statue of Maitreya is a water pitch with the shape of a bowl, the water of which is dropped from the tip of stalagmite on the top of the cave. The interesting thing is that the local people call the water in this pitch the sacred spring water. Therefore, you can also see many tourists take a sip of the water to pray for happiness and health.
In the central part of the cave, you can see many bluestones with many edges which can make produce the sound and resound in the cave. After beating the stones, several students come to learn Chinese in China are told that the Tibetan people often go to the cave to pray for rain when it comes across the drought because they think those stone drums as the instruments of God.
When you step up to the second layer of the cave, you can see the well-developed stalactites which are purely white and transparent. The most dangerous is the great divide as wide as ten meters but you can’t see the bottom. Besides, there are also many other stalactites of various shapes. It is a cave with the strong religious color, especially the Tibetan Buddhism.