Shangri-la / Zhongdian (Tibet) – 香格里拉/中甸（云南）

Shangri-la is located in a Tibetan county in northwestern Yunnan Province in southwest China, about 1,000 kilometres east of Lhasa. It is the capital of Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, close to the Myanmar and India borders. In other words, quite a remote place, but well worth a visit! Shangri-la used to be called Zhongdian until 2001 when it was renamed after the fictional land of Shangri-La in the 1933 James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon, in an effort to promote tourism in the area. The local Tibetan population refers to it by the name Gyalthang. I have just spent a few days there, at the end of my stay in Yunnan, and I loved it! It is quite high in altitude (3,300 metres or 11,000 feet) so you often find yourself out of breath. In fact, you can take a cable car to Shika Snow Mountain, where there are everlasting snows; at 5,000 metres high (16,500 feet) you feel on top of the world, trust me! The area is mostly Tibetan. There are few Han Chinese and everyone speaks and writes Tibetan. Of course they also speak Mandarin, even if heavily accented at times. The people are delightful, polite, curious and very friendly. The  food is divine. Songzanlin monastery is the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Yunnan, one of the famous monasteries in the Kang region. Construction of the monastery began in 1679 and was completed two years later. The monastery is composed of two lamaseries, and hosts 700 monks. A trip to the Pudacuo National Park is also worth a visit. There are two beautiful lakes that you can walk around, Shudu and Bita Hai lakes; at times the landscape reminded me of Alaska. Shangri-la is truly an enchanting place, so much so that I found it really hard to choose which pictures to post here!