Zhongdian Xian Stories


Quiet wet day In Lijiang

We had a good lie in and then went to the supermarket to buy lots of snacks as we were planning to go up to the field station the next day if our driver was already going up. We bought a big back each of food and then walked down to old town to buy some coffee for Robbie and Elsa to say thank you for letting us stay in their flat. On the way back it s...


Visiting the Shangri-la monastery

We had breakfast at the hostel, left our bags and headed out to the Monetary. We knew we could stay on the number three bus and get in the monastery for free, but when we reached a check point they would not let us stay on and kicked us off so we had to go through a check point and pay £8:50 or £5:50 for students. We were then put on a different bus and...


Walking around Napa hai lake and the countryside around Shangri la

We had breakfast at our hostel and then headed out to see the lake as the weather had improved a lot. We caught the number three bus, but we stayed on too long so we got off near the monastery entrance and walked back down the road after asking someone at the monastery entrance for directions to Napahai lake. On the way we passed a very strange long hai...


Journey to Shangri-la

We left the flat at 8:30am and managed to get a taxi to the bus depot easily enough. The bus depot was fairly large and was similar to the train station with an x-ray machine for the bags and then you enter a into one of the two waiting rooms. We had to wait about an hour for our bus, the bus was a cross between a mini bus and a coach. The coach would b...