Leaving Shangri-La

It was sunny on my last morning in Shangri-La. After writing half of my homework and checking out, I strolled through the old town, stopping again at Turtle Hill and continuing to the south of the city, which I had not yet visited. Though the maps say the old town continues for quite a while southwards, the pedestrian zone ended about twice as fast as it should have, and I wound up outside the old city again. With my itinerary for my trip more or less fulfilled, I decided to carry on south, since I remembered that at the southernmost end of the area was an enormous white stupa. I had seen it both on my trip from the airport and during my walk from Napa Lake.

Again, the road was lined with imposing, Soviet-looking buildings, trees planted with perfect regularity, and even more perfectly regular lamp posts. It was a while before I got to the stupa, but it was worth it. When my driver on Friday said this was a new stupa and it had an older stupa inside it, I did not quite know how to imagine the interior. As I found out, the stupa is entirely hollow, with painted walls and a regular-size stupa at its centre.

 The Soviet administrative buildings of Shangri-la

 The giant stupa of Shangri-la

 Creeping rain clouds

Prayer wheels at the stupa

As was the case in Napa Lake, there were no taxis, only organized tour busses, so I went to the airport on foot, passing by some pigs, cows, and dogs.

 Shangri-la's mountains

 Roadside pigs

Shangrila's Tibetan-style airport

The last thing I did in Shangri-La was I ordered myself a glass of yak butter tea, since I completely forgot to fulfill that obligatory touristy task while in the city. I can’t say it was particularly remarkable, perhaps because I ordered the sweet variety, which just tasted like watered down milk with a hint of tea.

On that note, though, I did have a quite interesting culinary experience of Shangri-La. Greater Tibet stands at a crossroads of civilisations, which is perhaps most evident in its cuisine. For my first dinner in Shangri-La, I ordered vegetable dumplings, called ‘momo,’ which – far from resembling Chinese jiaozi – struck me as more similar in shape and flavour to Central Asian dumplings. The next day, my lunch consisted of noodles, and I had curry for dinner, both much heavier, a little saltier, and more reliant on onions than their respective versions in China and India.