New Longmen Hostel Shangri-La

... from was a couple of thousand metres above us!!













We paid another 10 yuan to head up a different path that had some ladders & took us up to Sandy's guesthouse. First over a rickety wooden bridge over the waterfall that runs into the gorge & then ...

... people in the 1 km which the local bus drives anyway. The 2 main temples had huge buddhas inside a big temple. But everything was constructed a bit cheaply and the paintings mostly weren't great. It was like many other Tibetan temples only with multiple temples on a big hill. The houses on the hill below the temple were quite primitive and empty looking. In the paintings, the houses look cheerful and bright. They were doing a lot of construction on new temples so hopefully it will be ...

... last day in Shangri-la we rented bikes and biked out to the countryside. We started by biking to Da Bao Si, or big treasure temple and the way there was litterally and metaphorically breathtaking. Since Shangri-la is on such a high altitude it doesn't take much to make you gasp for air, and it didn't exactly help that the road kept going upwards all the time. The surroundings of the temple was covered by prayer flags, and on the way we met two boys that gave us inscence to put in ...

... and grab some drinks. Sheer drop-offs, huge waterfall, narrow gorge, awesome stuff.

We had lunch at the end at Sean's guest house with another hiker. An awesome experience, glad we decided to skip it at first at catch the good weather on the way back, it really paid off.

Hopefully the Chinese won't go through with their plan to build dams and flood the gorge, but unfortunately it seems inevitable.

... not just to the region where Shangri-La may or may not be, but also to the novel, the myth and the ongoing quest for a paradise that remains pure and beautiful and good. "Shangri-La: A Travel Guide to the Himalayan Dream," also serves as a first-rate guide to the places in Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet, India and China considered possible locations that inspired Shangri-La. I asked Buckley via email about mythomania, the lure of the mountain paradise, and what we're ...

Ryan and I are in Shangri-La today. It's as far north in this province as you can go without reaching Tibet (well there is one more town 6 hours from here that Ryan was all about, but it's cold here and frigid there, and to get to see the glaciers and stuff its a long hike uphill at like 12,000 feet....and I'm not into it). So there is a lot of Tibetan culture here. Yesterday we visited the largest Tibetan monastery ...

... was to be found at a large praver wheel in the old town. As we were walking around a roar of voices could be heard getting louder and louder in the town below. A few soliders come running into the square and then some more. Emma and I look at eachother with the same thought: 'Riot'. At the point when we decide to make a bealine for our hostel, the shouting reaches the square below and in marches the red ...

... We went in Sha xi to meet Afang, a very nice lady that we met in Shangrila. She renovated an old house 150 years and she decorated like a 5 star hotel. As the hotel was not yet open (1st of October) and as she was very nice, we could all stay for 30 yuans (3 euros) per night. As I know also that she was a very cook, and as my Chinese friends ...

... all catch up. Our plan for the day ws to trek on until we reached Halfway house which was another 5 hours on from The Naxi family house so we saddled back up with the men and mules in tow to march onward and upward. From around this point i decided to walk at a more slower pace with rob and martha as the hardest part of the trek was looming "28 bends".. This part of the walk takes you steeply up 600m to 2670m and is quite a climb i can tell you. It wasnt the hardest climb i ...

... buildings that are sweeping cities all over the place. The old town retains some of the old tibetan architecture, but is also being redeveloped with new "old style" buildings replacing the old town - preparing it for another tourist town like Lijiang we suspect. Settling in, we had some dinner and as then went into the main square in the old town to see the locals dancing. It was quite a spectacle that apparantly happens every night. It seemed quite an authentic local get ...