I arrived in Shangri-La by bus from Lijiang. The ride cost 68 RMB ($10.97 USD), took about four hours, and was full of beautiful scenery.
I knew I wanted to buy my ticket for Baishui Terraces tomorrow as seating is limited. Or so I thought, but more on that in my next post.
After buying my ticket, I went outside and as is standard China, any Westerner who emerges from a bus station, train station or airport, must be greeted by every taxi driver who ever lived. I honestly do not find this as over the top frustrating as I did last year. It is still annoying as all hell, but I have come to accept that this is China.
I pick a driver and off to my hotel we go. The ride cost me 20 RMB which = $3.23 USD
I am staying at N’s Kitchen and Hostel. I walk in and am greeted with “Jennifer?” because that is a perk of being a Westerner in China. You get five star diamond service by being greeted with by name whenever you walk into a hotel.
I am taken to my room, followed by the hostel dog. It turns out there were two of them, the tiny one was so adorable I wanted to steal her so badly.
Shangri-La was a victim of a fire back in January 2014 that completely destroyed the old town. The view from my window showed construction going on to rebuild. I could constantly hear it as well. It was a very noisy place. The noise did not bother me but I find that sometimes when you visit a place (Istanbul comes to mind) and you hear the background noise it is a bit surprising as you are in a real life movie scene complete with background music.
Room view:
It was around 4:00 pm when I arrived and I was told the internet would be on in half an hour. I internally groaned thinking that this meant my internet would be incredibly sporadic and slow but it turns out I had the best internet speed here so far in the trip.
As dusk hit, I walked over to Guishan Park. This was about a five minute walk from my hostel. At night the locals dance from 7:00 to 9:00. It was really cool to watch.
Even cooler was up above lives the Golden Temple and the world’s second largest prayer wheel. A lot of people think this is the largest prayer wheel in the world. That is because up until 2010, it was. Then a bigger one was built in Guide County in Qinghai, China.
People spinning the large prayer wheel.
View of Shangri-La from the top:
Down below, the locals dance nightly in the square:
I would love to come back here. First with a wide zoom lens to capture the enormity of the prayer wheel. Secondly, I have an overland trip planned out on paper to Meili Snow Mountain then to Yubeng. From here, I would then go onto Chengdu for the third time in my life and hope that the third times works to get myself to Emeishan.
One day…
Beautiful! Thanks for posting!
Thanks for reading!
Nice pictures!!! I like how that one dancing guy in the foreground is rocking it.
Wow, I’m so glad I stumbled upon your blog. Great photos! Do you find it challenging traveling solo as a woman to less advanced parts of the world?
-KC
Thanks!
The only place I have traveled that was less advanced was China so I cannot speak about the majority of them. But for China, I never felt anything because of my gender. It was challenging for a million other reasons, but thankfully, being female was not one of them. I don’t think I would have survived having one more challenge to deal with.
This place looks absolutely amazing. I’m happy you explored it. Unfortunately I never managed to go there… 🙁