Visit Southwest China
On the very edge of the Tibetan plateau is one of the most important Llamaist monasteries outside Tibet. The 300-year-old Songzanlin Monastery, home to around 600 monks, dominates the outskirts of the frontier town of Zhongdian. A new airport has opened up this beautiful and previously remote Tibetan region, renamed ‘Shangri-la’ after James Hilton’s mythical mountain paradise. Further north, at Deqen, yak-herding nomads tend their animals in a dramatic landscape of remarkable limestone terraces and slow-moving glaciers. From here the overland route to Chengdu in Sichuan Province is open to the adventurous via a spectacular but arduous journey reaching more than 4,500 metres across the high Tibetan steppe to Litang - home to a fabulous Tibetan horse festival each August - and great Mount Gonga.