Shangri-La is a magical place and yes!, it’s real! It’s located in the Southwest part of China in Yunnan Province. I traveled there in June 2021 for 5 days with 2 friends and the weather was lovely along with the amazing sights of majestic mountains to zip across, green grasslands to ride horses, incredible canyons to raft through and the bluest skies and lakes I’ve ever seen! 💙
To get to Shangri-La you need to fly into Diqing (DIG) ✈️ From Shanghai we had a three hour flight first to Kunming, short layover, and then less than hour flight to Diqing.
Few important things to note first…☝🏼
- Take your passport everywhere as you need it to buy tickets for the parks and such. 🎫 seeing as we are still in a pandemic they will probably ask to see your green QR code, your travel history and last entry stamp into China.
- I would bring more active wear for this trip. You can bring more casual clothes for dinner or whatnot if you want to change. But we were hiking and really getting in our steps this trip! 🏃🏻♂️
- The sun sets at 8:30pm!!! 😮 So you have sooo much time in the day to do things! 👍🏼
Here’s our simplified 5 day itinerary! 📋 I’ll go into more detail about our days if you’d like to keep reading. 🧐
Day 1:
- Arrived in Shangri-La
- Songzanlin Monastery
- Guishan Park
- Dukezong Ancient Town
Day 2:
- Balagezong National Scenic Park also goes by Shangri-La Grand Canyon
- Napa Valley Grassland
Day 3:
- Day trip to Lijiang. Jade Dragon Mountain to see the Blue River Valley.
- Black Dragon Pool
- Tiger Leaping Gorge
- Back to Dukezong Ancient Town
Day 4:
- Shika Snow Mountain
- Potatso National Park
Day 5:
- Baijie Temple
- Back to Shanghai
Let’s get into more detail! 👇🏼👇🏼
Day 1: Songzanlin Monastery, Guishan Park and Dukezong Ancient Town
After arriving in Shangri-La around 3pm, we quickly dropped our bags off at our hotel and were off to Songzanlin Monastery. Also known as Little Potala Palace, the Tibetan Buddhist monastery was originally built in 1679. The one that stands now was rebuilt in 1983 after the Cultural Revolution that took place.
Once you buy entry tickets, and a few minutes on a bus, you’ll arrive at the palace. It’s a few steps walking up once you’re in the center of it all. At the top there are beautiful views of the surrounding hills and mountains and a lake at the bottom 😍 The monastery is also surrounded by 2 small villages with monks doing their daily routines.
Once we were done at the top we trekked back down and walked around the lake at the bottom which took around 45 minutes.
We walked up a small hill which had prayer flags and saw some great sights of the palace with the lake in front.
I should note…we walked back to the bus stop and missed it 😅 we thought the last bus was at 7pm and we missed it by 5 mins. So I guess just get there before 6:45pm to make sure you’re on a bus. If you miss it like we did..we were able to just call a Didi. (China’s equivalent to Uber)
Prices for Songzanlin Monastery💴
- ¥75 entry to the palace and roundtrip bus to and from entrance.
After the palace we headed to Guishan Park, which was a short 10 minute Didi ride. At the top of the park is a temple with the worlds largest prayer wheel, which was unfortunately under construction.
Surrounding Guishan Park/Temple is Dukezong Ancient Town. Lots cute shops and restaurants. We had dinner at Flying Tigers Cafe. A great little restaurant with loads of western and local options. You’ll see that the specialty in Shangri-La is ✨yak meat✨ 🥩 We did try some yak dumplings, yak burger and yak lasagna. It’s wasn’t bad…but it wasn’t my favorite 😬 I would definitely say to try!
Day 2 Balagezong and Napa Valley Grassland
We traveled 1.5 hours along the Sichuan border to get to Balagezong National Scenic Spot. Once we arrived around 10:30am we bought tickets 🎫 and a bus whisked us away through curving roads up a mountain. You make 4 stops through out your scenic journey here. 🚌 ⛰
Stop #1- 30 minutes on the bus and we arrived at a Buddhist temple on the mountain.
Stop #2- Bala Village. Little town on a hillside. The man who paved the way for this scenic spot lived here. His house dates back to 400 years ago! 😮
Stop #3- Echo Wall. We walked along side a mountain here! ⛰ Here you can walk on a glass bottom bridge! The zip line is here also, for an extra fee. It takes around 45 seconds from one end of the mountain to the other. There was also an extended walk way with bar like rods to step on, but it was a no from me.🙅🏻♀️😰
Stop #4- We walked along the Shangri-La Grand Canyon. The walk took around 30 minutes! At the end you can pay extra for a small river raft ride to take you back the way you came. Otherwise you have to walk from where you just came from. 🚶🏻♂️
Prices at Balagezong 💴
- ¥115 entry into the park itself. We got discounted tickets from our tour guide 😬
- ¥1 booties to go over your shoes on glass bridge 🥾
- ¥120 zip line ⛰
- ¥120 river rafting 🛶
Our whole time at Balagezong took about 6 hours. This was my favorite day out of our time in Shangri-La! Definitely recommend a day trip out here! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
After this we headed back towards Shangri-La city to Napa Valley Grassland to ride some horses! These horses are quite small compared to horses I’ve seen in the states!
We rode around for 30 minutes around the grassland 🐎 There are options for longer rides but 30 minutes was just enough. In the middle of the ride there’s a stop where you can try archery, hold a baby lamb, or take a picture with a huge yak, for extra cost of course. Roaming the grasslands freely are herds of sheep, cows, zhom, which are hybrids of a cow and a yak, and other horses.
Price at Napa Valley Grassland💴
¥150 for 30 minutes
Day 3- Lijiang, Jade Dragon Snow Mountain-Blue Moon Valley, Black Dragon Pool, Tiger Leaping Gorge
Today we made a day trip to Lijiang which is 2.5-3ish hour car ride from Shangri-La. Jade Dragon Snow Mountain is the main tourist attraction here but we didn’t exactly go up the mountain. We were pressed for time so instead we just saw Blue Moon Valley 💙 which is at the bottom of the mountain. A bus took us to a few stops before stopping at the valley. Several blue lakes are here with a few small waterfalls and stunning views of the mountains. We spent around 2 hours walking along the small lakes taking pictures and admiring the icy blue waters from the glaciers in the mountains.
After this we headed into Lijiang to see Black Dragon Pool. On a clear day you can see a stunning view of the mountains in the back from the park with a pagoda and bridge in view. It’s a lovely scenic area. Unfortunately our day was pretty cloudy, it was still a nice lil park.
After about an hour ride back north, our last stop took us to Tiger Leaping Gorge. We spent about an hour here. There are some intense hikes you can do here that last a few days, but we just did the scenic spot overlooking the raging river. It’s a lot of steps going up and down. There is a convenient set of escalators you can take going up back up but we chose the natural stair stepper. I was pretty winded, but it’s doable! 😅
By 5pm we were done and headed back to Shangri-La! After an hour car ride we arrived back at our hotel, changed clothes and went back to Dukezong Ancient Town for dinner. We walked, which took around 15-20 minutes. From the alleyways of town you can see the temple on the hill and with the sun setting on it…it’s a literal golden hour 😍 I couldn’t stop staring!
Prices for today 💴
- ¥100 to enter Jade Dragon Snow Mountain area
- ¥20 for the bus service at the mountain
- No fee for Black Dragon Pool
- ¥45 Tiger Leaping Gorge
Day 4 Shika Mountain and Potatso National Park
Shika Snow Mountain is only 15 minutes from the city center. We got there around 9:15am and it was eerily empty. There’s 2 sets of cable cars, around 20 minutes each, which can take you to the top. It stops halfway and you have to get off. There’s an area with some cows and yaks here, but that’s about it. We found ourselves just sitting waiting for the next set of cable cars to take us up.
Once we were finally at the top we realized how windy and cold it was! 🌬 So definitely bring a bigger jacket or scarf with you 🧥🧣We were amongst the clouds and a few yaks up there. One of them got a bit angry we were walking past her little one and charged at me…luckily we were on a walkway so it couldn’t jump or get to close! 😅 we spent about an hour at the top of the mountain then made our way back down.
By 12pm we in the car headed to Potatso National Park. It took us about an hour to get here from Shika Snow Mountain. Be aware the road is not fully developed going here so it’s a bit little bumpy.
Once we arrived, a 20 minute bus ride takes us inland. There’s a lake with hills surrounding the area. It was so picturesque and lovely. There’s a walkway bordering the side of the lake that you can walk on. It took us about an hour as we stopped and took pictures of the adorable horses and cows that roamed freely.
We ended the day early as the whole trip was a bit packed with activities! So we headed back to the hotel for some much needed rest! 😴
Prices for Shika Snow Mountain and Potatso National Park 💴
- ¥160 for mountain entrance fee and cable car 🚠
- ¥100 Potatso National Park 🐴
Day 5 Baiji Temple back to airport
At around 9:30am we headed to Baiji Temple also called 100 Chicken Temple. We walked from the hotel back thru Dukezong Ancient Town which took around 30 minutes. The temple is up on a steep hill, I was a lil winded 😅 but the view on top is great as you can see all of the old town below you! There are chickens roaming around hence the name 100 Chicken Temple. 🐔 When at temples you should always walk clockwise, a lil piece of advice our guide gave us! 🙏🏼
Free entrance to Baiji Temple 👍🏼
After hiking back down we stumbled across a cat cafe in Dukezong! 🐈⬛ we had a quick coffee/latte and then headed back to the hotel to grab our things and fly back to Shanghai! 🛫
That’s it! That was our trip!!! Shangri-La is so stunning and a small piece of China that everyone should experience. I definitely recommend heading out there if you’re stuck in China like we are at the moment! 😅
If you’d like our tour guide we had for days 2 & 3 please message me and I’ll happily pass along her info!
Kitty&Co. 