Words by Tim Wong

A significant amount of time as passed since I last posted the series of photos from the Ancient City of Lijiang, but I’ve been meaning to post Shangri-La and finally found some time to do so. In between the trip from Lijiang to Shangri-La, we traveled along the Jinsha River or the “Golden Sands River” and made a stop at Tiger Leaping Gorge which runs between the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and the Haba Snow Mountain.

Throughout the entire canyon, there are miles of paths carved into the rock that run along and through the canyon.

Here are a couple shots at the top of the path.

The path wasn’t exactly what you would call a walk in the park and the fact that overbearing sun and heat didn’t make it a pleasant hike either. While walking on the path, the heat building up on the wood gets pretty hot and if the soles of your shoes are less than thick, the heat becomes unbearable to your feet. I found myself taking breaks in the shade so my shoes could cool off.

If you are faint of heart, you can pay a pair of guys to carry you down and around, but then they take the shortest and easiest routes so you miss a good amount of the little details.

The path takes you right up next to the crashing waves.

Eventually we arrived in Shangri-La and stayed a rather interesting hotel. The hotel resided behind the massive Ganden Sumtseling Monastery located in the town of Jiantang which is now called Shangri-la county in the Yunnan province.

The hotel was themed after the cultural homes in the region, but still retaining a somewhat modern facility.

This was the view from the hotel of the Ganden Sumtseling Monastery.

Some interesting dishes for dinner that night at the hotel.

Yak Beef

While I was there, I tried out some of the Dali beer local to Yunnan.

The next morning I was up pretty early and decided to shoot the sun rise. There was a large amount of smoke from the locals morning rituals. I shot a time lapse which I will release with the rest of the video content from this trip.

I spotted this junky Chinese three wheeler which looks pretty similar to the one they tested on Top Gear UK.

The next destination was a lake that we walked around around.

[This series of panoramas can be viewed at a high resolution by clicking them images.]

Interesting shift pattern on our bus.

At our next destination, we stopped for some lunch when I stumbled upon some wild pigs and cows.

I can’t say this was a very pleasant place to eat because it was really cramped with tons of gaudy decor.

This plate of raw meat was pretty good surprisingly.

This bowl of milk is something the locals drink to drink to compensate for the high altitude which causes inflated stomachs among other things.

I’m going to end this post here and continue next time with part two.