香格里拉
Shangri-La
Tibetan culture without the Tibet permit — monasteries, yak pastures, and 3,200m altitude on the Yunnan-Tibet frontier.
香格里拉
Tibetan culture without the Tibet permit — monasteries, yak pastures, and 3,200m altitude on the Yunnan-Tibet frontier.
Shangri-La (formerly Zhongdian) was renamed in 2001 after the fictional paradise in James Hilton's Lost Horizon, and while the name is a marketing decision, the landscape earns it. At 3,200m on the Yunnan-Tibet border, this is where Han China gives way to Tibetan culture — prayer flags, white stupas, yak herders, and monasteries on hilltops. Songzanlin Monastery, the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Yunnan, houses 700 monks and looks like a miniature Potala Palace. The surrounding landscape of alpine meadows, turquoise lakes, and snow peaks makes Shangri-La the end of the Yunnan loop and a gateway to overland travel into Tibet.
