Shangri-la

 12/12

We got up early and caught the early high speed train to Shangri-la. Shangri-la is famous because it might actually be the location of James Hilton's Shangri-la in his utopian novel "Lost Horizons". Shangri-la is also in a Tibetan part of China, though not in the province of Tibet. It's at a high altitude (3160m/10,370ft) and surrounded by snowy mountains. In 2014 a devastating fire destroyed half of the old town, but it did not damage the main Tibetan Buddhist temple on the hill in town.

When we arrived on the very cold morning, we took the bus to the ancient town and walked a bit along the cobbled, carless streets. We then hiked up a steep hill to a Tibetan temple that has the world's largest prayer wheel. And indeed it is huge! It takes about 15-20 people pulling on it to make it turn! Next we caught a bus to take us to Ganden Sumtsenling monastery that very much resembles the Potala Palace in Lhasa. There is a lake in front, from which there were good reflecting views of the monastery complex. We then climbed up the stairs to the monastery, which was beautiful with its shimmering gold roofs. Of course there were lots of Han Chinese dressed up in old Tibetan outfits holding prayer wheels. It's rather annoying to me because the Han Chinese have not been kind to the Tibetans. It would be like me dressing up in Native American regalia and going for a photo shoot to Mesa Verde or some other pace of spiritual importance to Native Americans. We climbed to the top of one of the buildings which afforded us good views of Shangri-la town and the surrounding mountains. 

After this visit, we went to lunch and walked a bit more around town while Elisha shopped. Back at the huge and brand new train station, we had fun trying to get all of the prayer wheels in the giant square to spin at the same time. We were able to because they were well oiled. We then took the high-speed train back to Lijiang. The train route to and from Lijiang and Shangri-la was probably 80-90% long tunnels; however it crosses a bridge over Tiger-Leaping Gorge, so we got a good glimpse of the gorge with its steep wall, rocky mountains, and blue-ish river below. The river had been a raging brown when I was there before because I had visited during the rainy season. I had really wanted to take Elisha on this awesome trek, but we just ran out of time. 

After arriving to Lijiang, we took the bus to the old city. I hug out with Dragon for a bit while Elisha shopped. Dragon gave us a parting gift of a box of flower cakes, then we went out for dinner before heading to the train station. We boarded a double-decker overnight train to Kunming (soft sleeper). This train was cool because not only did it have a dining car, but it had a disco car with a piano and disco lights