The Last Places on Earth  

Photos in this gallery are from my journey in China late spring of 2008. I started in Hangzhou, a very pretty and historic lake area a couple of hours outside Shanghai. It is one of the major vacation spots for Chinese people and has a large number of well preserved temples built on reclaimed land in the lake. I then went south to Guilin and took a boat ride down the Li River to Yangshuo, world famous for the exquisite scenery along the way. From there I trekked and backpacked my way back north through an agricultural region with spectacular terraced fields and a number of villages inhabited by colorful ethnic minorities. I then journeyed into Yunnan province up to the Tibetan areas and fabled Chinese "Shangri-La" city (formerly called Zhongdian). There I visited a famous and huge monastery built by the 5th Dalai Lama. I finished my journey trekking to some small and isolated Tibetan villages in the Meiji Snow Mountains, part of the Himalayas near the border with the Tibetan Autonomous Province. Read my story, China: Jet Age and Age Old Ways; Finding Shangri-La