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27th October 2025 - Drive from Lijiang to Shangri-La
We left our Lijiang Hotel after breakfast around 9:00am and our first stop was on the highway G353 viewpoint to see the First Bend of Yangtze River. Pretty impressive to watch this huge turn by the river.
From there it was another 1+ Hour ride to reach the Leaping Tiger Gorge. On the way we got the first 'snow peak' glimpse of this tour; that created a lot of noisy "wow" exclamations from the Bengali folks in our Van. They had no idea of the number of snow peaks we would see on the way to Nyalam (on the last but one day, even if you didn't count the Mt Everest, in glorious sunlight, at Rongbuk Monastery just 2 days before that).
The Gorge was in full torrential and noisy flow. There are a set of 4 or 5 steep, very-long, Escalator descends from the road-parking level to go down to the River Gorge level platforms. Pretty awesome to see the Nature's torrential Gorge flows and the man-made Escalators side by side.
The Tiger Leaping statue at The Gorge Entry point
From Tiger Leaping Gorge we drove for about 2+ hours to Shangri-La. Before we went into town, we first stopped at Viewpoint on the outskirts of the town, from where we got a beautiful long-distance view of Ganden Sumstseling Monastery, across an open grassland, with grazing Yaks..
Ganden Sumtseling Monastery is the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Yunnan Province, also called as "Little Potala". We visited this on the next day (28-Oct-2025) morning.
We then went to our Hotel "5th Meteorite Ziewei Hotel" inthe ancient city of Dukezong. It was in a very exotic setting of a Quadrangle yard of a Tibetan kind that is difficult to describe in words. See Video below. We myself and Subham were lucky to get a 2nd floor room with a Balcony facing the Quadrangle; with a distant view of mountains and the setting sun! That evening's Coffee-Adda session was naturally in our Room. Our Room Balcony was loved by all others in our group, ans used for taking Photo shoots.
That evening after it got dark we walked to Shangri-La Old Town and saw some amazing festive lightings, shops, food stalls and huge crowds of tourists mostly Chinese domestic tourists. The walk to the Town center was through some exotic street settings! Again see the Video with Thamyang leading the way, with his long-hair in his typical lilting(?) walk ahead of me. We had dinner in a Food Mall and afterwards attended a community Dance-Music session in the Old Town square. Somewhat similar to our Garba Dance in India during Navratri. See Videos attached below.
Our Shangri-La Hotel Address and Link:
Shangri-La's 5th Meteorite Ziwei Hotel (Dukezong Ancient City Branch)
In the ancient city of Dukezong, Shangri-La City, Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province
Long view of Shangri-La Monastery, from outskirts of town
Below extract from Wikipedia page on Shangri-La:
(More details at Link: Shangri-La - Wikipedia)
Shangri-La is a fictional place in Tibet's Kunlun Mountains,[1] described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by the British author James Hilton. Hilton portrays Shangri-La as a mystical, harmonious valley, gently guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains.[1] In the novel, the people who live in Shangri-La are almost immortal, living hundreds of years beyond the normal lifespan and only very slowly ageing in appearance.
Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise, particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia – an enduringly happy land, isolated from the world. Ancient Tibetan scriptures mention Nghe-Beyul Khembalung,[2] one of seven utopian beyuls which Tibetan Buddhists believe were established in the 9th century AD by Padmasambhava as hidden, sacred places of refuge for Buddhists during times of strife.[3]
Possible sources for Hilton
In an interview in 1936 for The New York Times, Hilton states that he used "Tibetan material" from the British Museum, particularly the travelogue of two French Catholic priests, Évariste Régis Huc and Joseph Gabet, to provide the Tibetan cultural and Buddhist spiritual inspiration for Shangri-La.[4][5] Huc and Gabet travelled a round trip between Peking and Lhasa in 1844–1846 on a route more than 250 kilometres (160 mi) north of Yunnan. Their famous travelogue, first published in French in 1850,[6] went through many editions in many languages.[7] A popular "condensed translation" was published in Britain in 1928.[8]
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