Near Tibet, Last Days in China

Well, we took a bus up to Zhongdian, recently renamed "Shangrila," (as a part of the Han Chinese effort to promote tourism in ethnic minority Yunnan Province) which is just on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau and ethnically essentially part of Tibet. As elsewhere in Yunnan Province, it was fascinating to see the traditional clothing...

...and architecture.

Every conglomeration of 4 houses has a religious spot, as Buddhism, as in much of the part of China we had visited, is very important.

We spent a couple of days cruising around town, but our plan had been to do some hiking at the edges of the Himilaya and it was very cold and snowy.

Our Chinese visas had only a few more days on them - we had to leave the country to renew them, and head back (so we thought at the time). We admitted defeat by the weather and hopped a bus...for Laos. Stay tuned for Laos, a totally different kind of place!