Tag Archives: Shangri-La

How Soon We Forget: Tibetans Still Die
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First-Pass-of-Kahm

As each week passes word comes of another self-emulation in Tibetan lands of China. Many are young monks, and more and more are women. The grief they must feel for the slow loss of their culture is unimaginable to me. In our tandem travels across Tibet, we saw the government’s attempts at subjugating the Tibetan culture by smothering their lands with emigrants from the Han majority: Read the rest of this article…

A Re-post of: A Thorn Tree Grows in Shangri-la
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Finally we waved and pushed off, our 26 inch prayer wheels spinning out thousands of goodwill messages up his mountain; but I think we might have missed the point. The farmer and his wife live Shangri-la, not just in it, but they are Shangri-la. They are poor, but well fed, and the circle of their days allows for a break when tired, a visit with passing strangers, the rhythm of weeding, or wall building when they feel like it, and the song of bird and stream as accompaniment to it all. Read the rest of this article…

Re-post of: Entering the Back Gate to the Garden of Shangri-la
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This is a re-post from about a year ago when we were still on the Tibetan Plateau. We re-post it here for those who might have missed the original. If you wish to read the complete posts of In Search of Shangri-la, click on the link under Adventures at left.

We’ve called this often grueling trip from Chengdu, the Back Road to Shangri-la. A few days ago, we entered the high gate to the garden of Shangri-la. We topped out above 15,000 feet each day, and often stayed there for hours. Read the rest of this article…

Losang’s Litang: Good Tibetan Site
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We recently had a comment from Losang about my post on Litang. He he has lived in Tibet for eight years and knows all corners. If our posts gave you a taste of Tibet, Losang ‘s site offers a feast. I’ve linked to just his Litang post, but you can follow other links to the rest of his site. Read the rest of this article…

Lucky’s High Pass in Tibet, a 16,000 foot high bear, one year ago today
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There will be more mountains to come, and some will probably seem harder than this one. Zippy is making strange noises from the drive-train, and we fear we have put him under too much strain this time.

We are sometimes tired, but feeling stronger every day. We’ve reached that magical three-week point in a long challenging bicycle tour, when we are in the zone, when we feel pretty much ready for anything. Read the rest of this article…

Litang:Tibetan Cultural Center of Tibet
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people think of the Tibetan people and the Tibetan Plateau as being only within the lines drawn by the Chinese government, the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Both the Plateau and the Tibetan people are spread over several other provinces. The government encourages Hans to move into Tibetan lands with various incentives, and by building new cities deep in formerly exclusive Tibetan lands. But the fingers of Himalayas we crossed to climb the Plateau, and the difficulty in building and maintaining roads, have kept this part of Tibetan land Tibetan. Read the rest of this article…

Snowy cold Tibetan pass for two weary travelers
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When we awoke it was still raining, spattering the mud puddles of the courtyard with discouraging regularity. We couldn’t imagine another day of near hypothermia, and more hills and bad roads. But, we didn’t want to stay another day with the road workers, nice as they were, so we packed up our filthy gear and steeled ourselves for the day. By the time we were ready to go, the rain had stopped, and there was even a hint of blue over the first hill. The road workers were spot on with their description of the road ahead, a first on this trip. Read the rest of this article…

Shelter in Tibet for two weary cold travelers
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We used Bob’s jacket printed with a map of the world on it to try to convey where we were from, where we’d been and where we planned to go. I have no idea if they’d ever seen a map before. It doesn’t really matter to them, their world is an isolated village along a road between two passes and 50 kilometers from the nearest town. It sounds romantic: going to sleep to the sounds of chanting and waking to the sounds of milking. But these women’s lives are a gritty existence that our culture hasn’t known for generations. Hauling wood, water, and food up the ladder to the living space, making butter and curds, grinding grain, hand washing clothes, keeping the fire going, cooking… Mundane, routine, weather-dependent, smoke-filled and layered with years of grime. Read the rest of this article…