From Shangri-La we made a bicycle and hiking trip to Bita Hai (Emerald Pagoda Lake). Bita Lake is beautifully situated at an an elevation of 3539 m in Pudacuo National Park and has a total area of about 1.4 square kilometers. Shangri-La is located at an elevation of 3160 m so the 20 km bicycle ride and the 8 km hiking up and down to the lake was quite hard. However at the end of the journey we got the reward of enjoying the beautiful scenery. Along the way we rode through several Tibetan villages.

Tibetan men and women busy with harvest near Napa Hai, northwest of Gandan Sumtseling Monastery in Shangri-La (Zhongdian), China

Gandan Sumtseling (or Sōngzànlín Sì) is a Tibetan monastery in Shangri-La formerly known as Zhongdian or Gyalthang in Tibetan. Gyalthang is located in the northwest of Yunnan province in the prefecture of Diqing. This town / area used to be Tibet(an) and has been occupied by China in the 1940’s. Gandan Sumtseling is roughly 3 km north of the center of Shangri-La. In the monastery we where invited in the kitchen by some monks. They seemed to be very lonely. It must be hard not to be able to travel to your home country and to lose a lot of freedom due to the Chinese suppression.

Muddy roads in the old town of Shangri-La (Zhongdian) due to days of bad weather   When travelling six months through Asia it is very hard to avoid both the rainy season and winter. We could avoid the winter, but therefore not the rainy season. So every now and then we had a lot of rain. Here in the old town of Shangri-La pigs didn’t seem to mind the rain and the mud.