Vapor Trails: Shangri La

Having made it back to Lijiang - I headed out the next day for Shangri La. The town's "proper" name is Zhongdian, but it's known as Shangri La, as the Chinese government have decided that this is where the town Shangri La in James Hilton's book Lost Horizons is.

Whether it is or it isn't - it's a really beautiful place - and it's one of my favorite places ever.

People dancing in the main square:

Luckily as I was walking through the main square I bumped into Kate, Karin, and Benji who I'd spent the second day on the Tiger Leaping Gorge walk. They pointed me in the direction of the Hostel they were staying at and I managed to get the last bed in the dorm.

It's a real traditional house made of wood, and has a wood burning stove in the front room, and outside toilets. Totally awesome - but a little noisy as the pub over the road (The Raven - which is owned by a Brit) plays cool music until way into the night (like The Clash and Pink Floyd) really enjoyable - but a bit frustrating when your still humming along at 2am :-)

That night we went out for Yak Hotpot, and I decided to give up on the vege thing and give it a go (although as there were two veges we did manage to order some greens).

...and then it was off to The Raven for a reasonably large quantity of drinks - including the highly popular Hot Chocolate with Baileys. We ended up getting thrown out at 1:30am, but had to listen to The Clash for another hour. The drinks were really cheap: Six people. One long party. And just 24 pounds! You couldn't buy two rounds back home for that...

Sign outside The Raven:

The next day Benji, Karin, and I hired some bikes and headed out to the monastery. We'd been told that we could save the 85RMB (about eight pounds fifty) by sneaking around the ticket booth - which we did - and it absolutely made the day.

After the long ride, someone was waiting for us at the entrance (I think we'd been seen sneaking around the ticket office :-) and wanted to see our tickets so we decided just to ride up the hill to the monks village and skip the monastery. On the way, we bumped into Barry and Sybil, from Tiger Leaping, and they decided to stay in Shangri La for the night.

The entrance to the monastery:

Looking towards Tibet:

The monk's village was incredible. At the entrance there's a large Stupa with prayer flags, and from there we headed into the village and watched the really friendly monks go about there business.

Prayer Flags:

Monks on Roof Repair Duty:

Lake outside the monastery:

Not having the ticket meant we didn't go into the temple, so we decided to head off and explore instead. So we cycled down a dirt track with no particular plan, and ended up finding this huge dried up lake. A local man was watching the Yak's and he started this really long conversation with us which none of us understood. But it turned out all he wanted to know was the time.

And then suddenly he was off running trying to catch up with one of his cows that had escaped :-)

Looking back to the monastery:

Luckily, we were able to find our way back to the road and Shangri La.

In the village itself there's a really great temple at the top of the hill, with an uber pray wheel. Everyone had agreed to meet there at sunset, and watch the sun going down. So we climbed the stairs, did the circuit of the temple, and did three turns of the wheel for fun.

The thing is so heavy that when you want to move it from scratch it takes three people to get it going.

There were about fifteen people at the wheel, so we headed headed to a great Tibetan restaurant (Arro Khampa - the vege thali was incredible), and then (almost inevitably :-) it was off to The Raven for another party.

I want one: