Shangri La

After the 4 hours ride up the mountains we arrived in the last Tibetan city which is accessible without applying for a expensive permission of the government. Like most cities in China there is a new and a old part of the city. We stayed in the old part, which is quite nice and looks a bit like a Swiss mountain village. Chalets are everywhere and the road goes up and down. On the central square there is food market during the day. At night it is the dancing square, where locals show off in front of tourists. Even though there are not that many.
To the north there is a old Tibetan monastery which was designed by the same guy, who designed the famous monastery in Lhasa. It is pretty big and nicely situated in front of a lake on 3300m above sea level. We rode the bicycles to the place and then walked around. The main building in the middle has been torn down by the Han and is now being replaced with a new one. That's a pity, but exactly fits into the thinking of the Chinese CP.
In fact there is only state television everywhere and shows people being happy. There are now controversial reports at all. Here follows a small collection of site that are blocked in the internet: youtube.com, facebook.com, flickr.com, blogspot.com (my blog), google.cn and many more. Controversial article links of major news networks don't work either. There are even spies in the street following tourists and checking on people working there. Corruption is huge, even though foreign tourists don't get hassled with that because the Communist Party of China would give harsh punishment to officials if caught. They are very concerned about their image abroad. CCTV the state news network, deserves it's name.
We did some long hikes around the area from where you could see snow on the surrounding mountains. The air is a bit thin, but it is manageable. During the night it can get quite cold. The main food they serve is of coure rice, but they also have a lot of yak meat.
Another great place.