Had a wonderful drive from Tiger Leaping Gorge to Shangri-la, after spending an extra night in T L G with some Irish friends I had made, passing some picturesque mountain landscape. The roads were quite winding and I regretted leaving my make shift seatbelt ...a luggage strap....back in my main ruck sack which I had left in lijiang! Arrived just after 2 in Shangri La and soon headed out to a nearby Monestry. AS I had not planned to come to shangri la after TLG i did not have my Guide book which was a pity as I like to read about the history of a place before i go and visit. the Monestry was very big with about 8 or so inner temples and real live monks inhabiting - preying and everything! Good job i didnt haven a camera as i would have been snap happy. Saw some young monks ..boys in fact...playing which was lovely. The monestry itself is tibetan and very ornate. Quite a few buddas (again)but the decoration was just spectaculour - possibly on a par if not better than say the Forbidden City. the structures were very very old and rickety and there was quite a lot of rebuilding i noticed ..I am guessing its a VERY OLD monestry.
I didnt spend too long here although you could quite easily spendhalf a day as i wanted to head to the old quarter of shangri-la. Night was falling and the old quarter reminded me very much of lijiang - very cute and old with cobbled streets. Most of the streets were alined with souvenir shops and it was obvious that the town has been geared up for tourism. The main square comes alive around 7ish when folk gather and basically dance in the square to music.there must have been around 150 or so dancing - it was soo cool. 3 old tibetian ladies started it all off.it was quite odd seeing ladies who could very well have been my granny dancing quite energetically to that traditional chinese violiney type music mixed with a beat box dance background base thing ..quite surreal
Shangri-la apparently gives those who cant make it, a taster for Tibet and I have to say the area is very different to the rest of China and in particular the womens' dress which is very bright and wonderfully colourful - very distinctive.
I found the locals to be very friendly indeed esp the bus driver who drove me back to my stop after I had missed it and the lady at the bus station who went out of her way to show me the bus to Lijiang.
Have now arrived in Dali after a bit of a nightmare journey here which is another pretty town with an Ancient quarter. Its raining so I havent really got time to give the town justice as I have decided to head off to Yanshou (via Kunming and Guilin) just as soon as possible to try and catch some good weather and superb scenery. Bus to Kunming is due in 15 mins so will sign off for now
ten 4.x
