There is a reason why someone, somewhere, originally coined the phrase where “life imitates art“. We could not find a better example than these layer cakes of amazing colors is a real landscape located at Zhangye Danxia Landform Geological Park in Gansu Province, China.
Even for the undeniably powerful Mother Nature, creating something this arty wasn’t easy. It in fact took 24 million years of painstakingly laying down mineral deposits to form these rocks. Over time these weighty layers were compressed into rock, and then a slight and unthinkably slow ripple from the collision of the Indo-Australian and Eurasian tectonic plates.
The rockforms of Zhangye Danxia range in colour from deep red to yellow and green, the highly contrasting bands of color glowing most intensely after rainfall. As the setting sun casts golden rays and a lacework of shadows across the landscape, the visual effect becomes even more stunning.
The region has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2010, and is a hot spot for tourists enjoy scenic walks and boat rides through the area, which is also home to a number of temples.
All images courtesy of ImageChina.
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