BootsnAll Travel Network



Zhondian aka Shangri-La

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Bob took a flight south from Kunming to Mangshi and then on by bus to Ruili near the Burma border.

Jana and I left Kunming on a Yunnan Airlines flight to the village of Zhongdian, a mainly Tibetan town near the Tibet border. The view of the sun glinting off the snow-capped 13 peaks of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain Range out of the plane window on the way to Zhongdian was breathtaking. The highest peak is 5596 meters and runs 35km from north to south and 12 km from east to west. Zhongdian, 198 km north of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, at 3200 meters high, marks the start of the Tibetan world.

Jana and I took a cold taxi ride to the unheated Tibet Hotel and booked a $2 double room on the second floor with squat toilets next door. We dumped our luggage and went to the freezing cold hotel coffee shop across the parking lot for breakfast. A young Western couple came in about 15 minutes after we had ordered. We waited about 45 minutes and finally asked the waitress where our food was. After much back and forthing it was finally determined that our breakfast had been served to and eaten by the young couple. He was very apologetic but she kept saying to the waitress “well, you brought it to our table!” So we had to reorder and wait again for our food.

Then we warmed up awhile in the sun on the hotel veranda before walking through Zhongdian-buying our regular supply of necessities- toilet paper and water.

We laughed when we came upon a sparsely stocked department store with Santa Claus singing jingle bells inside the front door. We looked for but could not find a towel to buy as the hotel charged 50 cents touse a towel for the hot water shower that is only available from 7pm to11pm.

Any place in the shade was freezing cold but we were warm as long as we were under the sun. We ate a late lunch at the Tibet Cafe where two young Tibetan waitresses were huddled around a charcoal stove. We talked to a youngish German woman with a small child-the only other customer in the cafe-who had been living in Zhongdian and studying tourism. She suggested that instead of going south to Lijiang on the main road, we take the road from Zhongdian to Baishuitai and then on to Lijiang. The road follows the Yangtzse River through Tiger Leaping Gorge. We looked at all the maps and pictures hanging on the walls; read the travelers tip books and laughed at some of the stories-some of them not so nice about the Tibet Hotel. We ate noodles and shared hot Chocolate cake.

Jana went back to the Tibet Hotel to crawl into bed and get warm with the electric hot pad under the bottom sheet while I walked several miles looking for the Gyalthang Dzong Hotel, a US joint-venture hotel, which was nowhere to be found. After a cold day, we spent a cozy evening reading in our warm beds heated by an electric pad under the sheets.

Thursday Dec 5
The next morning we stayed in our warm beds and worked on our journals and read guidebooks. We looked for a heated restaurant for breakfast but found none. Finally we we found the Camel Cafe on the main drag through town where Jana had Banana Oatmeal Porridge with condensed milk and I had the infamous backpacker Banana Pancake with sugar. Now I know why banana pancakes are so popular with young backpackers…with no syrup the bananas make the pancakes a little moist and sweet.

We found the bus station and bought tickets to the Baishuitai limestone plateau. Then we took the Number 3 bus to the Ganden Sumtseling Gompa-a 300 year old Tibetan monastery complex with around 600 monks. The monastery is considered the most important in southwest China.

Jana had been given a crystal by a friend and was asked to bury it as close to Tibet as we could get. So we spent some time out on the hill behind the monastary looking for an appropriate place when we came upon two old men fingering some beads. Jana chose to drop the crystal among some carved rocks under a tree behind the old men while I recorded the event with her camera. Satisfied with mission number two, we made our way through the maze of buildings, back down to the road, visiting with several young monks along the way…taking picture of one looking out a window with his little dog and another on a cell phone.

We ate dinner at a Tibetan style hotel next to the monastary….sliced sauteed (dry cooked) Yak meat, which was delicious, an eggplant and tomato dish and what turned out to be lamb neck bones on curried rice.

In the evening the Tibet Hotel coffee shop was full of smoking Chinese guys so we drank hot lemonade at the Snow Drift Cafe across the street from the Hotel, sat on a couch in front of their charcoal stove and visited with two girls, Phyllis (German but living in Switzerland) and Alex (English but living in the States and attending Ohio State in Columbus) who were on vacation from their MBA exchange program in Shanghai. We exchanged travel tips for awhile and then fell into a conversation about the Chinese economic system or lack therof. I gave them my book, �The Coming Collapse of China� in exchange for some chocolate and Jana heated up a sewing needle with a match so one of the girls could puncture a blister on her foot after her two day trek through Tiger
Leaping Gorge.

At the end of the evening, the cafe dog that had befriended us earlier fell asleep on the couch between Jana and me. We looked at the walls full of pictures of Chinese tourists that the cafe owner had previously led on tours through Tibet. We watched the Tibetan waitress playing with a Chinese puzzle. Then we reluctantly walked back across the street to our cold hotel room.

A stay in this town followed by a bus trip through Baishuitai, along the Tiger Leaping Gorge, to Lijiang would top my list of the ten best places to travel…in good weather.



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