MADE IN CHINA: from left; a Shanri-La Gorge yak herder; the gorge, up close; Asian beauties (Joshua Paul)
SOME THINGS, of course, had changed. During my Peace Corps trips, the only other foreigners we saw hung out in dingy backpacker cafés in cities like Lijiang and Dali. When I first visited Shangri-La City—then called Zhongdian—in 1997, a bus dropped me off on an empty, snow-swept street corner. From what I could tell, there were only two hotels in the entire city of 70,000. On my recent return, scores of hotels were crowded between karaoke bars and pool halls. A new airport, with direct flights from Kunming, Yunnan's capital, and a slew of upstart outfitters had made Shangri-La City an accessible outpost for the real Shangri-La. And foreigners were taking advantage of the new conveniences: More than a million tourists, mostly from other parts of Asia, visited last year, an astronomical jump from 2,000 tourists in 1992. It was beginning to feel like a Thai resort, minus the palm trees and mixed drinks, and I worried that the laid-back pace I'd found years ago might have disappeared. But I had no need to fear: At 168,000 square miles, Yunnan is bigger than California, and much of the land remains empty and wild.
From left: A portrait of Mao in Beijing's Forbidden City; Shanri-La Gorge villagers; a Buddhist monk (Joshua Paul)
This time around, I went straight for the centerpiece of this massive playland: the Shangri-La Gorge, a 680,000-acre conservation reserve that, locals told me, gets fewer than 100 visitors a year and is home to blue sheep and the lesser panda, a raccoon-size relative of the giant panda. I'd heard about a 50-mile round-trip trail in the gorge from friends in Beijing who described El Capitan–like cliffs, crystal-clear water, intact Tibetan culture, and, for much of the year, great weather. It's also relatively easy to get to—a three-hour flight from Beijing to Kunming, followed by a 50-minute hop to Shangri-La City and a two-hour drive north to the trailhead. The plan was to take five days, following the Gonju River east before climbing to a ridge under the frame of 18,200-foot Mount Balagezong, which would leave plenty of time for a leisurely return.
