Entry tags:

shangri-la, tibet, yunnan, zhongdian

Zhongdian Day 1
06/1/22

Zhongdian
Tibet
Shangri-la



More Pictures!


Woke up at 4:30am to catch a plane, which is ridiculously early. It wasn’t even light out yet, but once it was light out it was quite a view. I love being in planes during sunset or sunrise, it’s beautiful, I always take pictures (just go and check out my pictures, there are tons). Of course, I think just about everyone loves sunsets/rises. This one was especially gorgeous because by the time it got light we were passing over the southern part of the Tibetan mountains (cultural Tibet that is). Wow. Huge mountains coming up from the clouds. Damn impressive sight, I was already in love with Tibet. The turbulence was once again ridiculous right before landing. We weren’t lucky on this trip, the flight to Kunming and then this one? Damn. This wasn’t as bad, but it was probably scarier seeing as how we were having turbulence almost 30 ft off the ground.
Not only did we get the whole airplane to ourselves, but also this “airport” was amazing! SO small! We were completely isolated and it was just a landing strip. Definitely a first for me. The sign on the airport saying Shangri-la and the mountains all around was a fantastic first sight. God, I love Tibet! It was exactly how I thought it would be, people walking around in traditional clothing, even in the city, the architecture, prayer flags, stupas, everything. Exactly like I thought it would be. Loved it already. Even in the middle of winter when everything is brown and dead. Could you just imagine THE Shangri-la in the summer? It must be amazing. Gunpo and Tsebho grew up in grasslands nearby and I remember them telling me about it. Sounds fantastic.

The town itself didn’t quite capture me like Xiahe did; it was a lot bigger and a lot further away from the monastery. Xiahe was great like that; the shopping was also better there. After resting a while, Kat and I took off around the town to find something to eat. And, like always, we came across some western restaurants. The “Tibetan Café” which I’m sure had Tibetan food, and Chinese food for that matter, but as always, we ordered American. A healthy breakfast of friend bananas and hot chocolate with brandy (never to early to start drinking, lol). Ohhh, creepy occurrence happened there that morning. The hot chocolate came out in cups with the star zodiac signs on them (as opposed to the Chinese zodiac) and Kat and I both got our zodiac signs!!! Weird. So weird. Also weird? We were sitting there and I looked out the window and what was outside? A monkey. Yea. Sad though, we saw later that it was chained up. The café was also a hostel, like a lot of them are. It wasn’t the only one there either; there were a ton of western places (those little cafes that you find all over China) and hostels. The place must be crawling with tourists during the summer.

We met back up with TBC and headed to the grasslands for some horseracing. As always, put on for the pleasure of tourists, but that didn’t mean that the whole town didn’t come out to watch. Oh man, and the bus ride there? Freaked the new kids out really bad. Racing around corners at 50mph with a cliff on one side? Easy, there was so much worse on the Silk Road, but they still complained the whole trip. We passed a mastiff breeding place on the way there, it made me think of Tsebho who also raises mastiffs, I was just excited that I was going to get to see them again. The grasslands were amazing. Huge, but they looked so small compared to the mountains surrounding us. It’s amazing to go somewhere that actually looks like all the pictures you’ve seen. All the locals where dressed in their normal clothing, which was traditional Tibetan clothing and all the horses were dressed up with ribbons and bells. Oh man, there was even a yak there. Purely for picture taking, but I love yaks, they are adorable.
After a couple of races there was another competition that involved laying white scarves in the ground in a line (all parallel to each other) and the people, on their horses, would bend over and pick them up while the horse was running. They seriously sat on the side of their horses! Intense. It was fun to watch since it wasn’t nearly as cold there as they told us it would be. It was warmer than Beijing!

We went back to the hotel and had to sit through a painfully long lecture on Buddhism that contained absolutely nothing I didn’t already know. That would have been a perfect thing to skip. They took us to dinner afterwards at, get this, a ridiculously touristy place (for a change…). The veggie dishes were good (since I’m vegetarian and couldn’t eat the yak) but from what I heard, the yak wasn’t great. Which is a shame, I don’t know if they ever got to eat really good yak, they probably would have liked it. After dinner they made TBC kids go up and sing (which will also be another trend of the vacation). It was hilarious. It amazes me that all these cultures can have so many songs that they know by heart that most Chinese people know, regardless of what minority they are from, and we don’t have a single song that people know all the words too.


I wrote a lot about Tibet, and we were there for 3 days so I’m going to break it up. This was just day one of Zhongdian. Next 2 days include the mini Potala palace, an orphanage, a temple and making prayer flags, and hanging out with Gunpo and Tsebho.