Travel

Shangri-la's Meili Mountain

Forget what you thought you knew about paradise.

Guiyang is a city at once in the center and on the fringes. Draw a line on a map between Chongqing and Nanning, now one from Kunming to Changsha –they meet at Guiyang. The city features traits of the outlying four: wild, ethnic Kunming; subtropical Nanning, GDP-obsessed Changsha, and precipitous Chongqing. Yet rather than a reputation for combining the best of the Southwest, Guizhou’s dubiously conferred “poorest province in China” title saddles Guiyang with a rep as a backwards jerkwater, a wannabe hub in which you recover from your plane/train ride before boarding the bus to go see the Miao up in the hills.

Just in Case You Get Sent to: Ulan Batoor

TREKKING AROUND MONGOLIA

Just in Case You Get Sent to: Zhongdian

Zhongdian is regarded, at least commercially by the Chinese, as being "Shangri-La". Known however locally as Gyeltang, the town itself is a rather uninspiring collection of white tiled buildings (there are two hotels on the main drag through of similar description, and a main 4 star "Zhongdian Hotel" that caters for travelers, otherwise there are some guest houses with English signs up welcoming travelers on the road out towards the monastery. Further out, in the opposite direction, a collection of rough hewn Tibetan farmhouses stand, and the families there will also on occasion take in guests, albeit unofficially. You'll be living with the Yaks and Horses, but who cares?