Tibetan Area International Youth Hostel Shangri-La

... to go downhill. The water in the gorge was thunderous & loud as we got closer & just watching the power of the water was so impressive. You would never survive if you fell in. We sat for ages on a rock platform just watching the awesome power of the water. Looking back to the bridge where we had walked ...

... I expected Shangri-La to be a small high-altitude village but it's a big city. 125k people as of 4 years ago.

The main thing I came to see here was the big Tibetan 600-lama monastery (Ganden Sumtseling Gompa). It was not so impressive and they raised the ticket price 2 months ago quite a lot making me a bit jaded about Tibetan Buddhism. It was almost not worth it. They have laptops and electronic ticket gates at the grand ticket building and a whole fleet of fancy buses to ...

... persons just to begin to move it. From the small temple we saw yet another temple, located on a hilltop far away and we descided to try to find our way up there. After some time of searching we managed to find the way (you contiue up past the Himalaya Inn close to the main square) and the inside of temple was full of tree sculptures of protecting spirits, with many arms and colours. The outside of the temple was full of prayer flags, cows and chickens. It was really nice. :)

Shangri-La, Yunnan, China annadaniel

Don't have much time for an update. We hiked a couple hours to Naxi Family Guest house to stay the night. A really cool place, check out the view.

We got a private room/shared bath, with a view for $3 each. We had breakfast the next morning, a huge omelet and fruit salad, then set out for the gorge.

We stopped and checked out a few of the guest houses along the way just for a few minutes, to use the ...

... Lost Horizon. The book's hero, Hugh Conway, survives a plane crash in the Himalayas and ends up in a strange and far off land, where people don't age, the library has 30,000 books, spiritual harmony abounds and everyone has bathtubs from Akron, Ohio. Since the book's publication, travelers and writers have been trying to figure out if Shangri-La or the inspiration for Shangri-La really exists, or if we just want it to exist. Now, Michael Buckley has written a ...

... lunch is a high point as we get to see inside one of these houses, and have some trad food - bread dipped in a yak cheese-oil-sugar conncoction, and drink butter tea, a kind of milky salty sweet tea. Scott has tsambar poured into his which made it like sludgy milky salty sweet tea (not a highlight!). In the evening we clambered up to the top of a hill on the edge of town for some nice dusky views. It's really a lovely place, I could have stayed a few days longer.

... now even an airport to bring in tourists from far and wide. It has a small old town with a noticibly different charater to those I'd already seen, but still with plenty of places to eat, sleep and buy tat. The star attraction, a large buddhist monastry, only left me breathless due to the thin air and the large flight of steps. This monastry stuff is just not my cup of tea it seems. Ironically, the main ...

We did the way to Shaxi in bus, and we went again to Shangrila but this time with the sun: I think this time the munsun is finish or at least I hope. Shaxi is a small town lost in the mountain in the middle of valley. There are 11 small village of minorities all around and for the moment no tourist. The Village has been renovated by a swiss university of ...

... the low road which gives the trekker a better perspective of the sheer depth of the gorge but a rather boring walk along a concrete road. On the high path there are many options to stop off at family run naxi style guest houses to give the trekker a choice of what pace they want to take through this natural wonder. The first of which is the Naxi family house which is just 2 hors into the walk from Qiaotou. We decided to stop there for some refreshments and also to let the ...

... This place had hosts which spoke excellent english, were very friendly, the double rooms were cheap, very clean, with electric blankets (great for the freezing weather) and most importantly - piping hot water 24hours! It was a great find. Pity we didn't look at it when the taxi pulled up outside 2 hours earlier! Nothing like acclimitising to altitude with a 2 hour hike around town with heavy backpacks. Zhongdian is a tibetan town, but is rapidly being expanded with the bland ...