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Songzanlin Monastery
Songzanlin Monastery or The Ganden Sumtsenling Monastery, it is at elevation 3,380 metres has another alias - 'the little Potala Palace ', so named because the whole monastery is in the traditional style with mysterious atmosphere.
The entrance ticket is RMB115/person, and to get to the Monastery, you need to take free yellow bus for about 15 minutes near the ticket office, or you can take public blue bus no. 3 from the city.
Built in 1679, the monastery is the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Yunnan province. Located in the capital of Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, it is also the most important monastery in southwest China.
The Monastery was the highlight of the visit to Shangri-La. Be prepared for a climb to the top - there are many stairs. It is very interesting to walk through the Monastery at the summit, and the view across the plain is worth the effort. Although it was not easy to climb a few hundreds steps in high altitude with low oxygen.
If you have time, take a walk around the lake, which you can see the wooden path near the lake in front of the Monastery entrance, where you can get some amazing photos of the monastery reflecting on the lake. It only takes about 30 min to walk around the entire lake.
Potatso (Pudacuo) National Park
In Sanscrit, "Pota" means the same as "Putuo" in Buddhism, while "Cuo" means "lake" in Tibetan language. "Potatso" therefore means "a lake which releases living beings from suffering".
It located about 13.5 miles (22km) southwest and 40 minutes drive from Shangri-la downtown area. It is renowned for well-preserved primitive landscape, which is endowed with lakes, wetlands, forests, meadows, streams, brooks, rare plants and animals.
The ticket fare is RMB258 (including RMB138 admission fee and RMB120 sightseeing bus fee).
In the park, there are three main scenic areas open to visitors: Shudu Lake in the north, Bita Lake in the south, and Militang Alpine Pasture in the middle. The sightseeing buses run among these scenic spots and stop at fixed stations. Passengers can get on and off freely with one ticket.
Shudu Lake is the first stop of sightseeing bus, It is about almost half hour bus ride from the sightseeing bus stop from the park entrance. The lake was frozen when we came there in end of December.
At Militang Alpine Pasture, people are only given 10 minutes for shooting and viewing the grandeur grassland while bused on route from Shudu Lake to Bita Lake. Militang in Tibetan dialect means "Buddha's-eye grassland". It is a famous highland pasture in Shangri-La.
The last stop of the travel route is Bitahai Lake, which is located in the south part of the park. It is the key scenic spot of this park. The altitude of the lake surface is 3, 539 meters above sea level.
Giant Prayer Wheel
We arrived at the old town in the afternoon, and after finished dinner near the old town, we went to The giant prayer wheel just next to the Dukezong Ancient Town. And it is time for us to say good bye to our nice driver as she will return back to Lijiang, and we could walk back to our hotel and exploring the old town by ourself that night.
An eye-catching 24 meter (80-foot) tall golden prayer wheel sits on a hill. It has become an authentic building because local Buddhists now climb the hill to spin it to submit their prayers. When we got down to the carpark, there was very little time left to explore the ancient town. We went back to our hotel and explored the old town and found that most shops had closed. So we directly go to our hotel, turned the heater in our room, have a good sleep to prepare another journey to Kunming the next morning.
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