Foothills of the Himalayas Part III: Shangri-La

First prize goes to me and Ben No. 2 (a Kiwi we had met hiking) for finding the most ridiculously crazy van driver in the world. As the two "Chinese speakers" we were sent off to negotiate cheap transportation for our group of seven from the Gorge to Shangri-La. The older, saner drivers were not willing to meet our price, but Johnny, or #1 Driver, as he called himself was happy to oblige. Mullet flying, he karate-chopped his way to the van and off we went. We were not 10 minutes down the road, when we came across a fresh landslide that had just buried the road. Well, guess we have to go back right? Not with Johnny #1 Driver. We hopped out of the van and ran for our lives across fresh, unstable landslide, from which small rocks were sliding and Johnny #1 Driver followed with a burst of speed across the rubble.

We reached Shangri-La with no further mishaps, aside from some slightly unprofessional conversation topics from Johnny #1 Driver. The landscape and culture changed considerably in the 3 hours between the Gorge and Shangri-La. We had left Naxi territory and now were in a Tibetan lands. The huge mountains were still there, but now we were out of the foothills and officially on the plateau. The weather was much colder and Tibetan stupas dotted the alpine meadows of the plateau. We were starving, and after checking into a 300 year old guesthouse, we made our way to a Tibetan restaurant. I had always heard that Tibetan food is bland and boring, but the Chinese/Tibetan meal that we consumed was beyond amazing. The raw yak meat holds the place of honor as most weird yet delicious of the 30 odd dishes we sampled. Yak cheese fried in butter, not so good (in my opinion, but if you get some rice, add a bite of yak meat and top in with cheese...). We literally ate until we passed out.

Highlights from Shangri-La include spinning the world's largest Buddhist prayer wheel, drinking the world's best hot chocolate, and inciting a riot. Many of the hikers we had met on the Gorge trail ended up in Shangri-la with us and one night we were headed out to dinner en masse. A group of foreigners always catches attention in China, even in a touristy place like Shangri-la. A bunch of Chinese stopped us and asked to take our picture, and we pulled them into the picture with us. More people kept stopping to take pictures, and we kept insisting they join the shot. Pretty soon, anyone innocent person walking down the street was grabbed and added to the group until we had blocked the entire street with a group of about 80 people, foreign and Chinese.
Our last day in Shangri-La we again joined our big group of foreign friends and hired a van to go to some hot springs right outside of town. Warm and relaxed from the springs, we said goodbye to our new friends and got on another 15-hour sleeper bus back to Kunming. Again, I slept the whole way (even though my blanket smelled like feet) and woke just before dawn as we pulled into Kunming. It felt good to be home.