It has been my great desire to visit Tibet and after researching my options, I was deeply saddened when I decided against it. Traveling to Tibet is too expensive and too complicated. Foreigners can travel to Tibet only through a travel agency. This means that you pay for a fully organized trip with a guide: you can only do the things listed in the trip itinerary and I even heard that outside of central Lhasa, you cannot even go for a walk in the evening without your guide. Since everything is organized for you – you do not need to book a hostel, train, bus, taxi, find a place to eat, everything is done by the tourist agency – these tours are rather pricey. To make matters worse, you need to book a flight to Lhasa, which again is quite expensive. You can take a train to Lhasa, which I heard is an exceptional adventure since you will be going through the untamed wilderness of the Gobi and Taklamakan desserts and the Tibetan plateau. However, it is an adventure lasting 3 days.

I am at the point in my life when splurging a bit more on experiences – and Tibet is one magnificent experience – is no longer an issue, but I still travel modestly. I am staying in dormitories in hostels with squatting toilettes when I can afford a nicer accommodation. I guess you cannot destroy that poor backpacker from my 20s who would lose his mind because they ripped me off in Thailand for 50 euros. However, I still do not make compromises with complications. Traveling to Tibet means planning ahead. I need to book dates way ahead, I need to book a flight way ahead, which means I need to know that I am going to be in that city on this and that date. This might work if Tibet was my first destination, but I have arrived to Beijing in late March, and it is not a good time to visit Tibet. It is still too cold. So, Tibet will have to wait.

The next best thing to Tibet is Degen, an ancient city on the Tea Horse Road. The town is Tibetan in culture, geography and ethnic composition. It is on 3500m, in the Yunnan province, very close to the border with Autonomous Region of Tibet. The city has been renamed Shangri-la, according to an imaginary paradise city from the novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton, in order to increase the number of tourists. The novel was written by a Western author and is highly unsuitable for China since Chinese people cannot pronounce Shangri-la. Instead, they call it Xianggelila. I have raged against China’s attitude to “authenticity” in so many other posts so I will not do it again here. I would just like to note that I do not approve of this kind of name change.

It is a small town so I have planned only two nights in Shangri-la. I have arrived there in the early afternoon so after leaving my bags in the hostel, which was conveniently located right next to the historical town, I have set my sights to exploring the city. But first I needed to meet obligations to my stomach. Since I had nothing to eat since breakfast, I was very hungry but I was not in too explorational mood to try some weird yak dish – I have already tried yak meat once and must admit, I was not overly impressed – I went for a simple pork stir fry with rice. When the food came and I saw those red things all over my dish I was thinking: “Fuck, I forgot to say no spicy”. Luckily, it was spicy but edible. The taste was good, but with their spicy food I lose taste after a few bites. I have satisfied my desire for exotic food by trying yak yogurt with some strange powder. I have no idea what this was but it was delicious. Yak is, after all, nothing but a long-haired cow.

As many other historical towns in China, Shangri-la’s centre is an open shopping mall. The ancient town is a maze of narrow streets lined with restaurants and stores selling everything from traditional clothes, artisan crafts and paintings, fruit, yak meat and other yak products. I was on a mission to find something special – Tibetan singing bowl. It is a unique bowl that looks like a bowl for crushing spices: in fact, everyone that has seen my Tibetan singing bowl wanted to use it to crash spices. I already have one, which I bought when I was in Nepal looooong time ago, but I had to buy one for a friend in charge of keeping the plants in my apartment alive while I am traveling. Even though there are many shops selling artisanal products, it took some time to find the store specializing in Tibetan singing bowls. Stores either have none or have a whole collection of Tibetan singing bowls. At my third Tibetan singing bowl store, I was finally ready to buy it – you need to walk around to see what the prices are. It was around 50 euros, very nicely painted and it screams. There was one singing bowl that I liked more because the inside was engraved, but it produced lower tone and my friend likes it as loud as possible. It comes with a wooden spatula, which looks like something you can crush spices with. To make it sing, you need to take it into your hand, but only at the palm, you cannot touch it with your fingers, and then start slowly and in the same rhythm circling around the edges of the bowl with the wooden spatula. The metal will start vibrating, which produces noise. If you do it right, it can be very loud. This is why you cannot hold it with your fingers, because holding the sides of the bowl will stop it from vibrating. No vibration, no sound.

After getting back to my hostel, I ran into a Chinese guy who immediately asked me: “Do you like hiking? You look like you like hiking.” Yes, I replied enthusiastically. He informed me that he and his friend are going hiking tomorrow for the whole day and asked me if I wanted to join. He showed me two photos of the hike – high mountains with snow and lake – and that was more than enough for me to say yes. I wanted to hike this high in the mountains so badly but could not find anything. My plan was to rent an electric scooter and drive around the countryside. This sounded so much more appealing. The guy did not speak very good English so I could not get too much information about this hike, but I did learn that we need to pack all the food and water because there are no stores along the path. OMG, this sounds like a proper European hiking experience.

Hiking in China is not what you would expect. So far, I have climbed 3 out of 5 Great Mountains, one Sacred Buddhist and Taoist Mountains (there are 4 sacred mountains of Buddhism and Taoism) and all of these hiking “paths” are made of stone or wooden steps. The goal of hiking in China is that your feet never touch earth, it seems. Furthermore, if you are hiking a mountain to get some peace and quiet, you are at the wrong place: all these mountains were stacked with small shops selling overpriced food, drinks and souvenirs. The worst part is that most of these mountains’ top can be reached either by a cable car or road, so the summit is always full of noisy Chinese. I know this is not true, but when you hear Chinese people talk to each other, I feel they are arguing and bickering at least 90% of the time.

So, it was time to get back to the shops to buy food for tomorrow. I went back to the same restaurant where I had my lunch and this time my experimenting mood was in full bloom. It was time to try some yak meat. The way many restaurants in China work, you have a big menu on the wall, with photos of the dish with description (in Chinese) and price (in Indo-Arab numerals). My eyes quickly centered on this yak dish that looks like budjola: round, very red meat with small white lines of fat. After 5 minutes of back and forth with the waiter, I learned that this is raw meat and that I can have that in either stir-fried or hot pot version. That was quite a disappointment. Croatian food, and especially from my region – Slavonia – is full of smoked and dried meat so I was looking forward to trying some smoked yak meat. In fact, I have already tried dried yak meat. It is in long, thin slices marinated in hot spices. It is truly a test of how good your teeth are. Think of smoked sausage that you cut to pieces and then leave it outside to dry, make it 5 times harder and you get this dried yak meat. Eating it is culturally enriching but gastronomically not a pleasant experience. But, I am happy to report that this yak stir-fry was so much better than the first yak dish I tried. I have again forgot to say “no spicy”. We are at 3500m so I blame my forgetfulness on low oxygen levels in the air.

It is 6:15 the next morning and I am sure that all of my roommates hate me. The rule of staying in a dormitory is that you wake up not when you want to wake up, but when the first alarm clock rings. Ah, what can you do… I needed to be ready to go by 7am and I still had to find my breakfast. The more I eat now, the less food I will have to carry with me. Our guide came to pick us up around 7:15 and after circling around the old town to pick everyone up, we were on our way to the hiking trail, which is around 1h away from Shangri-la.

We were a mixed group of 7 people plus our guide. Besides myself, the guy that has invited me to this trip and his friend, the group included a girl in her 20s from Nanjing, who was the only one who spoke English well, an elderly woman who came appropriately dressed for a visit to the shopping mall. After 5 minutes of hiking she told me how handsome I am and after 15 minutes she was talking how me and the girl from Nanjing should get married. She said it in Chinese in the way that I did not need a translation. We also had in the group a chubby but very cheerful girl who had a tendency to celebrate climbing every higher hill on the path by falling on the ground and rolling in dirt for a minute. The last member of the group was a guy in his early 30s who did not speak much and was mostly hanging out at the back of the group. Soon, we were only 6. The guy that invited me to this trip was staying overnight near the lake so he was carrying a lot more luggage than the rest of us – food and water for 2 days plus a tent – so he quickly fell behind the group. I will see him only two more times that day – first time on our first longer stop, when he managed to catch up with us, and on our way back (you go back the same way you came), when he was still climbing towards the lake.

The start to the hike was very promising. We were passing through a low-tree forest with some trees in bright flowers. The weather was cloudy but dry and rather cold and windy. The next section of the trek was a high tree forest covered with green low hanging moss. It looked like a scene from some mythical country. You pass through many high-altitude pastures. We even passed by a lonely yak. My first experience seeing a yak in the wild! 

After about 2 hours of climbing, we reached a large meadow with tents and enclosures for yaks and goats. This is where we had our lunch. There were other groups with their own guides grouped together under the tent. Some were cooking yak meat, while one group was grilling spam. I was operating under the basic hiking rule – the more you eat the food you brought with you, the easier your bag will be. I did try traditional Tibetan milk tea. Chinese, unlike Indians or British, do not drink their tea with milk, but people in high altitudes of this Tibet-adjacent area do. Tibetan milk-tea tastes very strange, it is quite salty, actually, but you get used to it. We were sitting around a fire stove to warm up and I have just finished eating my Korean pears when I started searching for the trash bin where I can put the pear leftovers and the plastic bag. To my horror, one of the guides just took it from me and threw it in the fire. I tried to protest that you should not be burning plastic, but found little interest in my arguments.

I was the only non-Asian person there so even though I was the only person not speaking Chinese, a lot of conversation was about me. The girl from Nanjing kept me updated. One of the guides asked me if I wanted to try bear meat, as the Nanjing girl translated, clearly confused. Startled by this question, at first, I said yes, I would like to try a little bit. The guide replied something in Chinese and I did not need a translation to know he said “then go and catch a bear”. Hahaha… Is it very funny when you can understand a joke in a language you do not understand, or is it lame?

I did learn some interesting information about our guide. He is married so he is saving money now. Hopefully, next year he can find a second wife, he said. I learned that all of the guides are members of the Yizu ethnic minority, which still practices polygamy. China has banned polygamy under Mao’s communist regime in the 1950s, but as a sign of respect for its ethnic minorities, it allowed some of these groups to continue practicing their traditional lifestyle.

Practicing polygamy in the 21st century might sound shocking to us Westerners, but the reality is rather more complicated. In my work with young people (high schoolers and student age population), I would ask them to define alternative family. They would bring examples of polygamy, polyamorous relationships, open marriages and similar. But, and that is a big but, polygamy and polygamous forms of relationships have been the standard form of relationships in most societies. Culturally and historically, monogamy is the alternative family form, occurring primarily in the European world. The most radical form of monogamy is advocated by Christianity. Romans practiced something called consecutive monogamy, meaning you can have only one spouse, but you are allowed to divorce and remarry. Christianity goes one step further, marriage is for life and you can only remarry if your spouse dies. Even more radically, Christianity expects fidelity in marriage. Galen, the famous 2nd century Roman physician and virulent anti-Christian, summed up his disdain for Christians, and he expounded the views of every proper Roman, by describing them as “weird” because:

1. They believe in the resurrection of the body – every reasonable and rational human being knows, of course, that it is the soul/spirit that resurrects. The body just turns to dust.
2. They do not “play” around – being Roman gave you certain privileges, and they believed it is their right to take slaves, servants and non-Romans for their sexual gratification. Consent was not very high on the Roman agenda and neither was fidelity.

After about 45 minutes, we continued our hike. We kept climbing higher and higher and were now in the parts covered with snow. Snow might look pretty, but it is a nightmare for hikers, especially if they are wearing semi-open summer hiking shoes. The trail becomes wet and slippery and the trail, molded by steps of thousands of hikers before us turns into a stream.

The mountain becomes even steeper and greyer – we have left the forest and green vegetation behind and not it is just us, snow, ice and rocks. Oxygen is also becoming a luxury. We are around 4500m now but I was not too worried about altitude sickness. I have been high in the mountains for the past few days and have previously climbed above 5200m. I know the drill, the faster you climb up and down, less likely it is to develop altitude sickness. Also, eat and drink, even if you are not hungry or thirsty, it helps. Just in case, my Chinese friends gave me a glucose drink specially made to combat altitude sickness.

As the trail gets more difficult, the views get more stunning. But a new trouble arises – very strong winds. My hands are feeling the cold, especially since I am taking my gloves off to take photos every two minutes. And then we made it, you know you have reached your destination when a magical view of the lake opens below!

After everyone has taken their photos, we were ready to get back, and not a minute too soon. I barely had control of my fingers and the pain started being quite intensive. This is not a circular trail so we are going back the same way we came, which is not ideal, but still the scenery was amazing. The weather changed every half an hour and it reached peak sunshine just as we were about to enter a large open meadow, where a herd of yaks has migrated. I saw my first yak calf! It is so tiny and adorable, laying on the grass and sunbathing.

The entry into the hilltop temple of Shangri-la is free, but you need to sign up through WeChat (they limit the number of people that can enter). Maybe it was all the beautiful scenery I have witness during the day, maybe it was the tiredness, but the views of the temples were underwhelming. There were still quite a lot of people there, which makes exploring rather unpleasant, so I finished my tour in 30 minutes and went straight to bed.

The entry into the hilltop temple of Shangri-la is free, but you need to sign up through WeChat (they limit the number of people that can enter). Maybe it was all the beautiful scenery I have witness during the day, maybe it was the tiredness, but the views of the temples were underwhelming. There were still quite a lot of people there, which makes exploring rather unpleasant, so I finished my tour in 30 minutes and went straight to bed.

I decided to skip shower. Bathrooms are shared, it is cold outside and the shower is right above the toilette. Does not look very inviting, does it?

Shangri-la is very rugged and takes all the Chinese particularities to a whole new level. Squatting toilettes are standard in most budget accommodation and I am quite used to them by now. My aim is impeccable. Hahahaha… But this is the first time I was expected to shower and take a dump at the same time. Also, matrasses in China are very thin, but in other places, at least there was a matrass. In my hostel, I felt I was sleeping on a yoga mat. It was very painful. Luckily, I found some very thick, warm blankets so I placed them below me to make the bed feel softer. Finally, I could not stop laughing when I saw women taking photos around the old town in traditional dresses. This is common occurrence in China. In fact, many of the stores selling traditional clothing also rent the clothes (I have seen some of them also offering make-up and hairstyle services). Chinese cities are full of these women taking photos in traditional clothing. Sometimes they hold a stuff bunny to make it more artistic, authentic or whatever. In Shangri-la, they were holding a live lamb or goat.

Next day I woke up at 6:15 and by 6:30 I was ready to go to the famous Songzhen Monastery. It is the main Tibetan Buddhist monastery, which looks like mini-Lhasa. I got conflicting information about what time it opens – some sites said 7:30, others 8:00. I got there at 7:00 and went for a walk around the nearby lake, which offers magnificent views of the temples. It was early and cold and to make matters worse, the rain started to drizzle. At the entry to the monastery complex, I saw two guys starting an open fire to warm up. They asked for my ticket, I said I don’t have it and asked them where I can buy it. But they told me to just go in. I do not consider entering without paying a success. If there is a price for everyone, I should pay as well. However, I suspect there is no counter to buy the tickets. Instead, you had to sign up online again, which is a hassle, because everything will be in Chinese, and the two guys were more preoccupied with staying warm than with guiding me through this process of registering for the ticket.

The streets were almost completely empty while I was climbing to the main temple and the main square. Truly a magnificent sight. I went inside and took the side-rooms to climb to the viewpoint on the top of the temple. There was a monk there drumming – the same process is done by Catholic priests every morning with the church bells. If you live close to the Catholic church, you will know what I am talking about. After taking some photos, I went back down and entered the main prayer room. It is unlike anything I have ever seen. Taking photos was not allowed and I had to employ all of my restraint to obey the rule. I could have taken many photos undetected for sure. I was the only one in the temple, besides some monks that were too busy meditating. Since photos are not allowed, I will try to describe it. First of all, there is the sensory overload. The inside is very colorful, smoke of incense arising from many areas. The smell is intensive but manageable. I always hated thymian, an incense used by Catholics, but this was a much less intensive smell. The hall is full of Tibetan thangka paintings and large statues of Buddha and other saints and deities. On the opposite side of the entrance is a line of magnificent statues. Unlike in Catholic churches, sitting places are not horizontally placed, looking at the statues, but in vertical lines, so two rows of benches are facing each other.

The photos of decoration were taken in the side rooms before I entered the main prayer hall. I did not see a sign that taking photos was forbidden in this area, but maybe I missed it. Anyways, these photos will enable you to imagine the colorful spectacle inside the main prayer room. While you are enjoying the sights, there is a constant humming noise in the background of the monks meditating. It is a combination of singing and reciting, with different monks playing different roles: while some were reciting, the others were producing very low bass tones.

All of the temples have prayer rooms with similar format. Some were smaller, some were larger, but the basic principle of how they were built was the same. If you think I got a sudden burst of religiosity, you would be wrong. All these temples are also shops and you can see money lined up all over the prayer areas. In one temple, I have seen a monk collecting this money, but not all of it, of course. You have to leave some money laying around so others know they should put more money there. I am sure that every cardinal who participated in recent election of the Pope would find his behavior very admirable.

As all prayer rooms and inside of the temples were no photo zones, I will finish this post with photos of the temples from outside. They are too big so it is not easy to take a good photo of them.

This is where my journey to the Tibet-adjacent area ends. It is time to pick up my bags and go straight to the train station. The Jade Dragon Snow Mountain awaits…