Blogs from Shangri-La, Yunnan, China, Asia - page 2

Before getting into much detail I should note that this area is extremely mountainous. Further west of where we have driven the last few days are the wondrous Himalayas. While the distances here are fairly short in terms of kilometres or miles, the difficult terrain lengthens the time of the trips. Number One – From Chengdu to Kangding – Hurry Up and Wait Approx. time quoted by our guide book: 8hrs Actual travel time: 12hrs We left Chengdu at 8am prepared for a long day of travelling. Until this point we had been able to travel via overnight trains and hadn't had to take any form of transportation during the day. Overall this ride wasn't too bad. It was a nice day and our first glance at the mountains in China. The only problem with this ... read more

Note (again): This blog is also photoless thanks to the myriad of incompatibilities between Travelblog and your average Chinese computer. We are presently unsure whether this relationship is the intention of some saavy censorship body or merely innocent technical difficulties. Assume what you will but, as we will endeavor to highlight, censorship in China is broad spectrum and actually quite lacking in intention and daftness. Reading a map is a martial art. It is easy to understand the idea of cartography, but difficult to replicate that ideal on the surface of a spheroid. Add to that the complications of rivers and mountains and major pieces of information become obscured on the surface of the paper. Multiply that with the changes of human development and false information enters the fray to make navigation something not so firmly ... read more

Shangri-La is the new (2001) name for Zhongdian, used to attract tourists; they're the same city. People there do say that this city was the inspiration for the book, but there's not much to corroborate the claim. Still, it's on the edge of Tibet, and though not in the Tibet Autonomous Region, 80% of the people are Tibetan, and the city exudes the culture. The main reason we decided to continue on to Shangri-La after Tiger Leaping Gorge is to see if we could enter Tibet. It's close to the Tibetan border, and there are flights from there to Lhasa. Also, given the unpredictable changes in restrictions, there were a lot of rumors about, so we weren't sure what to expect. But, when we arrived and checked a couple of places, we found that no one ... read more

The 4 hour bus trip to Shangri La was quite enjoyable mainly due to the fact that Aleksei and myself were the only foreigners and also there was no problemsmoking onboard. We wound our way around the mountains for a few hours and as we were coming up to a high pass the houses became wooden cabins for a more tibetan feel. Once over the pass we came down to a narrow and flat valley full of yaks and horses grazing and the occasional large log cabin style wooden house. This continued for about 15kms before we came to a lot of very large wooden and mud houses which was obviously the outskirts of Shangri La. Wherever you looked there were new houses and when we came into the large town the streets were very wide ... read more

In this area, we have learned much about China and China’s relationship with the Tibetans. The town is part of the “Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture”, located right next door to Tibet. Our guide, an ethnic Tibetan and a Buddhist, gave us a great deal of information about Tibetan Buddhism and some knowledge about then history and politics of the area. Needless to say, he was careful. Shangri La town used to be called Zhongdian, but the government changed the name to Shangri La in 2002, hoping to attract tourists looking for the mystical place described in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon. We drove here from Lijiang, over mountains and past rivers and lakes and pastures where yaks are still grazing before heading for the higher meadows this summer. The city is definitely ready to receive tourists, as they ... read more