Shangri-La: The Lost Horizon

Zhongdian was renamed Shangri-La in 2001. Before that, it was just an ordinary Tibetan county town deep in the Hengduan Mountains.

But when you stand beneath the golden roof of Songzanlin Monastery, watching dawn light inch across the snow mountains, watching monks in crimson robes pass through the prayer hall — you feel that no place deserves the name "Shangri-La" more than this one.

I met Zhuoma by Napa Lake. She has herded yaks here for twenty years. "What is Shangri-La like?" I asked. She laughed and pointed at the distant snow peaks. "Like this. Flowers bloom in spring, rain comes in summer, leaves fall in autumn, snow falls in winter. Yaks eat grass. People drink tea."

Hilton's Shangri-La was never a set of coordinates. It is a way of living — in rhythm with nature, at peace with time, reconciled with the self.