Adu Inn Shangri-La

... more time travelling through the Sichuan province. <br><br>Meanwhile, I was positively surprised by Shangri La. Few tourists here, colder weather (we are at 3200m), a lot of Tibetans and a pleasant living old city.<br>The city was originally called Zhongdian but some locals decided to change its name to make it more attractive to tourists. New name comes from James Hilton's 1933 bestseller: Lost Horizon..<br><br><br><br><br>

... br>home and abroad tourists. According to the prefecture's tourism bureau,<br>Deqen Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture has served 2.05 million<br>person-times for the first half of the year, up by 29.9% to the same<br>period in last year.<br><br>In recent years, Deqen Tibetan Autonomous<br>Prefecture focus on building quality scenery areas ...

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... Kunming was a pleasant introduction to this and amazing how a developing city can retain such a peaceful and laidback style. It certainly doesn't exude the manic rush present in other Chinese cities. How this manifests is something that we had difficulty getting used to at first. For example, spending a fortune on our Tibet tour and several flight tickets to walk away with nothing physical but a 'reciept' for "all tickets" and a assurance that it will all work out ...

China's Shangri-La is gateway to region's tourism, prosperity - Los Angeles Times The economic downturn is slowing tourism worldwide. The slowdown - combined with tightened entry rules for the Beijing Olympics, a catastrophic earthquake and Tibetan unrest - contributed to the first decline in China tourism since the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. China received 130 million foreign visitors last year, a decline of 2 million, the ...

Travelling in this part of China is quite time consuming. You count yourself lucky if there is one bus a day, which often leaves at 6am. The journey from Litang to Shangri-La involved two buses and a night stopover in Xiangcheng. We arrived at night and left before it got light so i have no idea what Xiangcheng is like beyond the hotel (which had amongst its room options a 'husband and wife room' and a 'normal ...

... and think it's incredibly pointless of them to keep things closed. Anyhow, with our plans (once again) rerouted, we decided to just take a couple days to chill out in this wholly chill city, ride out Jesse's stomach grumblings, acclimatize to the altitude, and take all the surrounding beauty in. And what better way to do the latter than on a motorbike? We ended up renting one for a slightly expensive (but altogether worthy) 100 RMB... this time, petrol instead of ...

... the dead meat until after an hour nothing remains but a few bones. It was a surreal experience, gruesome and intriguing in equal measures. It hit home what was actually happening when a vulture flew off with 3m of intestine hanging from its mouth. We headed on to Daocheng in the hope of reaching Yitang national park. Unfortunately the park and road was closed due to fighting between the Tibetans and Chinese and we could only go if we bribed the police. Daocheng ...

... two day hike. To those familiar with my usual hiking stories, the 'hiking nazi' (thanks for that, Dan) took a break - I had plenty of company on this one, and really enjoyed it. A fairly disparate group from France, Japan, the USA, New Zealand and Ecuador, they were all intelligent and interesting people who made the time fly past. Also, having a dirt path to follow instead of the typical Chinese paved road improved it no end. The ...

One of the places I have been looking forward to visiting is Lijiang, in Yunnan province. I have heard lots of good things about this place so was very excited when we arrived here about 6pm on Monday from Dali. Unfortunately it's still raining, but that kind of added to the town - the cobble stoned streets were wet and gleaming and the umbrellas everywhere made it very colourful. OK, it's glaringly obvious that I'm attempting to be positive - the rain is really starting ...