Shangri La

Anyone who has read James Hilton's book "Lost Horizons" will know that in it, he descibes a beautiful yet mysterious Tibetan land called Shangri-la. He talks about snow capped mountains, mist covered monestary's, rolling hills, and broad valley bottoms. While we may never know exactly where this place is, the Chinese believe that he was talking about the area around Zhongdian, a town in the very north of Yunnan province (China). This is where my two Japanese friends and I headed to next...and it was indeed quite stunning. We managed to find a great little hostel run by a couple of tibetan women. It was the perfect place to relax for a couple of days. And, it seemed as if we had lost the hordes of Chinese tourists further south (not to mention the few western tourists that were around).

.1 Frank's Map

We visited a beautiful tibetian monestary, soaked in a nearby hotspring, and hiked some of the neighbouring hills. The scenery was spectacular and the people very friendly...we had kids trying to help us find a room, truck drivers honking and waving at us, and just about every 3rd person on the street saying hello. The kids here learn how to speak english in school...granted it's only one word; "hello" but its pretty funny. You know what's coming when a lady leans down and whispers in her child's ear "Say hello to the white guy...now's your chance...don't be shy!" and seconds later an embaressed and shy kid may say "hello". Some of the more brave kids (Or packs of teenage girls) will say "hello, how are you?" and then run off giggling.

1 Night Temple of Lijiang

After two days we took a spectacular bus ride north into southern Sichuan. After crossing a mountain range we kept gaining elevation and soon it felt like we had reached the end of the earth; we had ascended to 4500 meters above sea level and reached the tibetan plateau, a brown barron landscape. On the bus ride there was this really cool Tibetan monk. Man what a scene, hair pin turns around every corner and this monk chanting something in Tibetan to make sure that our wheels stayed on the road. But soon he was groovin to the sweet sounds of Moby, Daved Holmes, and U2...he had discovered my minidisc player. For me, hearing him sing to U2 in Tibetan was worth a million bucks. And he could dance, let me tell you.

2 MMmmmnn BBQ!

3 On the Bus

4 Tibetan Monestary

5 Valley Bottom

6 Tibetan monk

7 Prayer Flags Blowing

8 Tibet's Coolest monk

9 Brown HIlls of Daocheng

9.1 Tibetan House of Southern Sichuan