Shangri-La (Courtney)

Our last instalment in our China 2008 tour!


Shangri-La was one of the highlights, especially of the tour we did. It was one of those sleepy towns, which almost felt like a ski town, just a few main streets, a small town square...and that's about it! It was so tranquil, it kind of made me wish we could spend a couple of months in a town like this, just being away from it all.


Shangri-La used to be called Zhongdian, but it's name was changed after a book was written by some white guy about a lost paradise. The Chinese govn changed the named to Shangri-La to boost tourism. Whilst I'm sure tourism has definately increased as a result, it was still the quietest place we visited. It's about 3,500 above sea level and is surrounded by mountains. The air was pretty thin up there...so maybe that's why we found it so peaceful!

The hotel we stayed on was on this little street. Down the end of this road was the local square..

..which was BBQ heaven by day, dancing hotspot by night.

Look at that pitiful little face!

Whilst we had an afternoon snack of skewers, we also got involved in a very tense skewer sword fight with one of the local kids!

Nothing to see here...

Local Tibetan dinner, of course involving Yak Butter Tea. It was actually nowhere near as bad as we had imagined, even with my rather dubious face.

Local streets by night.

We stopped off at a local bar for a drink after dinner. Not quite sure who Gompo is, or why he needs a defence fund, but I like it!

The following day we headed to a Lamasery, the largest outside of Tibet. See those stairs? Well normally, these wouldn't pose much of a problem. But due to the altitude we were all wheezing and about to keel over by the time we got to the top.

Sadly the place was overrun with children beggars. We gave a couple of them a couple of coins, this little fella because I had taken his photo. Mind you, he tried to barter with me, which is just infuriating as these kids just should not be in that position.

Monks!

Don't try and take a photo near a yak. You get into trouble.

Another local street, they were so beautiful to wander around.

Some local ladies waiting for the music to start so they can get down and boogie! The local square turns into a dance area at night. What was fantastic about this was it was not a tourist thing, like so many other towns. It was just the locals, of all ages, dancing to the local music. This place had such a great community atmosphere. The crowd would grow as it got darker, to the point where the whole square was full, all moving in time to the songs.