We featured James Hilton's "Lost Horizon" as a book review earlier in the year on China Expat (see book reviews) and we don't think that Shangri-La is Zhongdian, the description isn't right. It is in Tibet though, but certainly further over to the West, closer to India or Pakistan. Anyway, what about Zhongdian? The town was awarded the right to style itself "The real Shangri-La" by the Chinese a few years ago, but this is really marketing dollars than any serious claim. The town itself in fact is rather an uninspiring dump, to be frank, and a world away from Lijiang, which is where you'll have probably driven here from-- it's a full days drive. This is North Yunnan, previously part of the old Tibetan Province of Kham, so Tibetan culture abounds. However Zhongdian isn't cultural: white tiled buildings and a Han Chinese idea of what is "Tibetan" as evening song and dance routines and Yak burgers. The Tibetans don't even call it Zhongdian: to them this is Gyelthang, and sinisation has taken it's toll on what was a remote spot amidst lush pastures.

Nonetheless, there are good reasons to be here. Firstly, the drive from Lijiang is spectacular, past Tiger Leaping Gorge (get out and go see) then steadily creeping uphill through forested mountains, through cloud cover and by the side of rampaging streams and small rivers, it's a breathtaking journey. One eventually climbs out over the tip of the hills and decends into a plain. Immediately everything changes: the building style, the scenery, and this is Kham. Spiritually, if not modern geographically, you're now in Tibet's Southern pasturelands. It's still another 3 hours to Zhongdian, a new and well built road will whisk you along, past grazing Yaks, and small homesteads and meadows. Zhongdian is home to the Ganden Sumtseling Gompa Monastery, (Songzhangling in Chinese) a Yellow Hat sect and built by the then Dalai Lama some 300 years ago. It's still in order, a prestigious learning centre and very well preserved. Yellow Billed Coughs circle overhead, while the gold leaved temple stands out for mile: iit's quite exquisite in it's beauty, while the Hengduan Mountains to the North signify the Himalayan crossing to get into Tibet proper and over to Lhasa via the border town of Deqing. Please note that route is usually off limits to foreigners -- not for any particularly insidious reasons but just because it's dangerous, although some pre-arranged and escorted tour groups do get through. Dangerous as in sudden snow falls freezing unprepared passengers to death by the bus load during August each year, so don't try and be smart, you're likely to get turned back and there is a good reason for it.

Zhongdian itself has a Festival involving horse racing and various other Tibetan crafts and sports during the first week of each July, which is well worth going to see, while further ron out of the town one reaches Bitahai Lake, a desolate body of water, skirting the high peaks, and home to rare Black Necked Cranes and other birdlife from Autumn onwards: they winter in these lower altitudes. There are a few hotels now in Zhongdian, reasonably priced, but try and avoid the obviously pastiche Tibetan experience and head off out a bit into the hills, there are several family homes offering home cooked meals and they are far more realistic. All in all Zhongdian is worth a visit, especially as a three day extension onto a Lijiang trip: the scenery around is superb, and the Monastery one of the best preserved we've seen, although the town itself is far from James Hilton's vision. Spectacular? Yes. Shangri-La. Well unless I live to be 196 years old by some chance I would say 'No.'