A G: Tea Horse Road - Shangri-la by Aaron 香格里拉

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Tea Horse Road - Shangri-la by Aaron 香格里拉

Shangri-la

~Aaron

Tea Horse Road

Tea Horse Road Day 4,

Lijiang, The First Bend of the Yangtze River,

The Tiger Leaping Gorge, Shangri-la

The beautiful Shangri-la

The beautiful Shangri-La

The First Bend of the Yangtze River （长江第一湾）, Tiger Leaping Gorge （虎跳峡）, Tibetan performance, and Shangri-La were all wonderful. The Tiger Leaping Gorge and First Bend of the Yangtze River （长江） are two close places! We rode horses in Shangri-La. The Tibetan performance had delicious food.

The stone statue of
the First Bend of
the Yangtze River

The First Bend of
the Yangtze River

The First Bend of the Yangtze River and Tiger Leaping Gorge are very cool. This place is the first time along the Yangtze River where it makes a curve. A platform was specially made to view the bend. The Tiger Leaping Gorge has its name from the fact that somebody saw a tiger leap from a rock onto the other side of the river to complete a journey between the Jade Dragon Mountain 玉龙雪山 (5596 meters high) and the Haba Mountain 哈巴雪山 (with altitude of 5396 meters). The rock mentioned in the legend 虎跳石 is a 13-meter rock that lies in the thin part of the river. The river water here is the very rapid and hits the rock with a loud noise.

The Tiger Leaping Gorge

See the Tea Horse Road on the left mountain?
Left: the Jade Dragon Mountain
Right: the Haba Mountain

The rapid river water

The Tiger Leaping Rock 虎跳石

View of Tiger Leaping
Gorge from above

View from above

The horse riding
(me in the front)

The horse riding
(still ahead of my family)

Riding horses in Shangri-La was a fun thing to do. I was the last one to ride a horse on the way to a hill and back. However, I had to steer by myself the whole time and was still always the first to get to the stop. Shangri-La is well-known because of the famous Hollywood movie Lost Horizon. The book was written in 1933 and the Hollywood movie produced in 1937. It’s about a group of people whose plane has been sabotaged and the pilot flies to Shangri-La. Most of them want to stay, but one of them wants to escape and go back to his life. The place where James Hilton (the author) describes sounds very beautiful and caused many people to start to search for this place. The area where this is about can be anywhere among Luguhu Lake 泸沽湖, Lijiang 丽江, and Shambhala 香巴拉. Shambhala is now called Shangri-La, though it may not be the described area (for info on how James Hilton got a description of the area and inspiration for the book, view my Lugu Lake post).

The traditional Tibetan dance

Tibetan singer

The night we spent watching the Tibetan performance was awesome. The traditional food was yummy. It included roasted yak meat 烤牦牛肉, chicken soup走地鸡汤, qingke seeds 青稞粒, qingke wine 青稞酒, suyou tea 酥油茶, and a desert made of suyou tea mixed with Qingke flour. The performers danced, sung, and even played instruments.

All these places that we went to and activities we did were fabulous. The Tiger Leaping Gorge and First Bend of the Yangtze River form a very famous place. Shangri-La contains many fantastic horses to ride on, flat plains, and high mountains. Our visit to the Tibetan house was a nice choice. We had a wonderful time at Shangri-La.