photos 2013 may

Still farther northwest of Lijiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge lies a city called Shangri-La. Yes, they renamed a city after the mythical city, so as to attract tourists. And it's working! The city is at 3000 meters elevation (Denver is 1500m).

Scenes from city life in Shangri-La

Here is where we had dumplings made from scratch!

A Tibetan Buddhist monastery and surrounding community.

Inside were two story statues of Buddha. We couldn't take pictures inside.

One of the strange ironies of mixing politics and religion. A Buddhist monastery that sells weapons: hauberks, maces, pitchforks, spears, etc.

I slept from 9.30pm - 11.30pm that night, and woke up feeling like I wasn't breathing. Turns out this was a form of altitude sickness called Cheyne-Stokes breathing. Your body chemistry gets confused. Your body then starts a pattern of breathing that is irregular. It will feel like you're not breathing. The first times this happened, I was totally scared! I looked it up on line since I couldn't sleep. The next day, I was pretty tired.

Scenes from the old section of Shangri-La

We tried the yak meat. It was really good.

For breakfast, I tried barley porridge. It was...ok. You get tired of the taste relatively quickly though.

We went to the first national park in China, Potatso National Park. It was at 4000 meters elevation. I wasn't sure how that would affect me. Fortunately, they sold oxygen in cans!