Has anyone ever read Lost Horizon? In the book, a group of travellers end up stranded in a "mountain paradise" several months south-west of Peking and a couple hundred kilometers north of the town where the Chinese and the Tibetans trade their products. The book calls this place "Shangri-la", which some people think was taken from a buddhist word meaning paradise. The chinese town of Zhongdian decided, based on the description of Shangri-la in the book, that their town was the Shangri-la, so it was renamed. That's where I am now. But first I'll describe my time in Dali.

By the time I reached Kunming I was thoroughly sick of long, overnight train rides. So, instead of going directly to Lijiang as my plan had originally been, I reversed everything and went to Dali first. Dali is only a 4-5 hour bus ride from Kunming, so I arrived in the afternoon and took a taxi to my hostel. I checked in and found that I had the whole room to myself! Not bad for 40 rmb! Then I spend a lazy afternoon wandering around the town and taking pictures. The town itself is really beautiful. It's set between a mountain and a large lake, and the rivers flowing from the mountain to the lake have been directed by the locals into these beautiful water gardens throughout the town. The architecture is incredible: every building has the traditional tiled roofs and the whitewashed exterior walls are covered in paintings and carvings.

What else did I do in Dali? The local people are called the Bai, and I went on a cruise on the lake that included a three-course traditional Bai tea ceremony with music and dancing. The cruise stopped off at various islands where you could see the scenery and buy grilled fish and shrimp. An Austrian guy from my hostel, Gunther, and I went to Butterfly Springs, which were alright, and to another tea ceremony and the Three Pagodas. The Three Pagodas were erected by the locals to keep dragons away. They say that since they've never seen a dragon it must have worked! Other Chinese tourists kept stopping us to pay us compliments (he for being so tall, me for being so pale).

Then I went to Shangri-la. I've been trying to avoid sleeper buses so I made the 8-9 hour journey during the day. The scenery was very beautiful - we drove past the beginning of Tiger Leaping Gorge and through a twisty-turny mountain range. I'm convinced that if I die on this trip it will be due to Chinese traffic. Everyone drives so quickly, even around hairpin turns above a sheer 300 foot drop to the river below with no guard rail. They pass slower moving vehicles at ridiculous speeds at turns and areas where you can't see if there might be a truck coming along in the other lane to crush us. I guess this is why most people take the sleeper bus - so they won't be awake or aware of this.

Anyway, we eventually made it to Shangri-la without any problems. The owner of my hostel, Kevin, came to the bus station to pick me up and he brought me back to the hostel, pointing out how to get to the sights and the post office. I dropped my stuff off and went out searching for dinner with a Dutch couple I had met. We went into the Old Town and found the locals in the main square dancing! There were about 50 or so people in traditional dress dancing around in a circle in the square and many more tourists had joined in. We stopped and watched for a while, then walked on. We walked by what looked like a convenience store, but we were waved in for dinner. There was only enough room for about a dozen people or so, and several of those there were the owners and employees at another local cafe. We chatted with them over yak butter tea and were invited to the cafe the next day. On our way back to the hostel we decided to try joining the locals in their dance. It was harder than it looked!

The next day in Shangri-la I spent the morning at the post office packing up and sending home souvenirs and gifts and postcards. Then I walked back to the Old Town where I browsed the Tibetan shops and climbed to the monastery above the town. Shangri-la is right on the edge of the Tibetan plateau, and there is a lot of Tibetan culture here. The signs are all written in both chinese and tibetan script. It's a nice place to get a feel for Tibet without actually having to pay for everything to go to Tibet. At this point I wasn't feeling well, and since my symptoms exactly matched those of altitude sickness (and after all, I had just rapidly ascended to more than 3200 meters), I took it easy for a couple days.

I did manage to vist the local temple, Songzanlin, which was pretty incredible. It is usually the picture that people see of Shangri-la, but it's about 4 kilometers away from the town itself. I tried a couple local specialties - yak meat dumplings, or "mo-mo", and yak cheese fried in butter! I also rented a bike and went out to the grasslands to see grazing yaks and stuppas, but since my camera died when I was out there I'm afraid there will be no yak pictures for anyone!