There was a time when reaching the old backpackers' destination of Dali, on Erhai Lake in southwest China's Yunnan Province, took a real commitment to a hard journey, and Leaping Tiger Gorge, Lijaing and the mountains of Yunnan that separate four of the world's great rivers - Yangtze, Salween, Mekong, and Irrawaddy - were a hard trip even further beyond.
Now, as The Globe and Mail reports in Chasing the Dragon's Tail, it's a bit of a different story. The region has been renamed, for tourism, Shangri-La, has it's own airport, and hosts more than a million visitors a year.
There's no future in rueing progress. The best thing to do is just go there - but you'd probably better hurry.
This photo is from the China Gallery at EarthPhotos.com. These guys are hauling bananas from a ferry down on the river below, up to a truck for transport in the direction of Yuanyang, Yunnan Province, China. The highway runs to Yuanyang in that direction and down to the Vietnam border at Sa Pa in the other. See also the Vietnam Gallery on EarthPhotos.com.
UPDATE: A brand new article in Perceptive Travel on exactly this, called Hijacking the Shangri-La Brand.
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