Shangri-la may be a fabled utopia come to life, but getting there was a real stomach-churning adventure, writes Bruce Munro.
The road to Shangri-la began and ended in bed.
It began in the early hours with the sound of someone vomiting.
It ended 20 hours later, 400km away, bile rising in my throat.
Our small band of three New Zealand journalists was already five days into our oriental adventure by the time we headed for fabled Shangri-la.
We had arrived in China early on Monday morning off a 12-hour overnight flight, swapping New Zealand's temperate climes for the 40degC-plus humidity of a Shanghai heatwave.
That day and the next were spent wide-eyed, nibbling at the edges of all there was to experience in that fascinating, decidedly modern, distinctly Asian mega-city of 22 million souls.
Then, accompanied by our Air New Zealand host and his wife, we had flown 2000km southwest to Yunnan province.
In stark contrast to muggy coastal Shanghai, elevated Yunnan - whose mountainous borders abut Vietnam, Laos, Burma and Tibet - was refreshing, green and sparsely populated.
Here, gold-bearing mountains patrolled by soldiers formed lofty shark-tooth pillars supporting a heavy ceiling of rolling cloud.
This region, one and a-half times the size of New Zealand, but comprising only 4% of China's enormous landmass, is home to half of that country's ethnic groups.
Inhabiting the folds of Yunnan's myriad deep valleys are at least 25 different people groups, each with a distinct language, traditions and style of dress.
That afternoon, we explored a Naxi village in the company of our Insider Expeditions guides; Kewen the non-conformist, adventurous Chinese national, and Max, the young Belgian who had made China his home.
We wandered Yuhu's narrow cobblestoned streets lined with stone houses whose roofs bear statues of gaping, fanged cats intended to scare off evil spirits and suck in good luck. We were invited into courtyards where Naxi matriarchs were teaching the next generation their people's dances.
And we visited the erstwhile home of renowned American botanist and explorer Dr Joseph Rock, who lived in that village during the 1920s and 1930s.
The next day, we bounced south in Kewen and Max's black 1950s-style Chinese Jeeps to Shaxi, a town of the Bai people and an important staging post on the ancient horse and tea trail that for centuries linked China and Tibet through the trade of these two vital commodities.
There we enjoyed a delicious multicourse lunch in a garden beneath a fruit-laden pomegranate tree, listening to a handful of veteran Bai musicians practise for a festival.
Then, after a few hours of wandering the town and its rural environs, we regrouped for another sumptuous feast in preparation for the next day's journey to Shangri-la.
But unknown to all of us, probably during our evening repast, we had eaten something unclean, uncooked, or both.
The evidence, however, was as undeniable as it was unstoppable.
Sometime after one o'clock in the morning, I woke to the sound of vomiting on the other side of my lodge-room wall.
This was not a slight case of an upset stomach, but rather the groans and grunts of a body convulsed time and time again, forced to disgorge any and all foreign matter.
Not long after daybreak, we were told that not one but two of our party had been struck with a nasty case of food poisoning.
Neither Max nor our host would be able to travel, and our host's wife was also feeling unwell.
How were the three of us feeling?
Kewen wanted to know.
A bit queasy but keen to press on, was our unanimous response.
It took a couple of hours to find the afflicted some alternative accommodation and relocate them during brief intervals between desperate dashes to the bathroom.
So by the time we did hit the road for the four-and-a-half-hour journey to Shangri-la, Kewen was keen to stop as infrequently as possible.
It suited us.
We were excited by the prospect of seeing this mythic town for ourselves.
In 1933, English novelist James Hilton wrote Lost Horizon about a fictional earthly paradise called Shangri-la.
Hilton is thought to have been inspired by what he read of Dr Rock's explorations in Yunnan.
The name Shangri-la has since become synonymous with notions of a caring, carefree utopia, exciting imaginations and luring visitors from around the globe.
The other reason meal breaks were no longer a top priority was that our stomachs and heads were feeling increasingly like jellies slam-dancing on a wobble board.
When we did stop for lunch, at about 2pm, I wanted only a small bowl of plain rice and the opportunity to go to the toilet.
The state of the roadside restaurant catering to coachloads of domestic tourists cured me of the first desire.
The toilet, a room with waist height cubicles over a tiled channel with no obvious means of flushing its odiferous contents, cured me of the second.
Our journey continued.
At times the road followed the mighty Yangtze, the world's third-longest river. At other times it traced mountainous contours deep into side valleys.
But always we climbed.
Until, at about 3300m above sea level, the highway emerged on to a wild open space, the Tibetan plateau.
Dotted around the rugged plain were gigantic timber and clay houses, all facing towards the rising sun.
Kewen pulled in near an uncompleted house adjacent to the road and led us over to marvel at its huge structural beams, each hewn from a whole tree.
One of our group inexplicably headed back towards the road. Why became apparent when she suddenly bent forward and surrendered her lunch to the roadside ditch.
All was not lost.
As she headed back to the Jeep for a welcome drink of water, a family of semi-domesticated pigs snuffled over and made sure nothing went to waste.
The last leg of the trip is a bit of a blur.
With nauseous feelings growing by the minute, I hunkered down, retreating from the outside world as the remaining kilometres bumped by.
It was late afternoon when we reached our destination, formerly known as Gyalthang to Tibetans and Zhongdian to the Chinese, but renamed Shangri-la in 2003 to capitalise on its tourism potential.
We were supposed to drop our bags at the hotel and then go view the nearby Songzalin Tibetan Buddhist monastery, which was the town's pride and joy.
But that would have to wait for tomorrow.
Tomorrow we would feel well enough to catch a bus over the hill behind town to where Songzalin's ridgeline temples suddenly swing into view, a gold-plated vision of devotion at the top of the world.
Tomorrow we would take our time in the thin air, slowly climbing the monastery's many steps to the three main temples at an altitude only 250m short of the peak of Aoraki Mount Cook.
Tomorrow we would watch saffron-robed Tibetan lamas most of whom come from bourgeois families who can afford to build their sons houses in this enclave - talking on their smart phones before and after shifts in the temples.
Tomorrow we would enter the temples with the reverential crowds and walk clockwise around enormous, two storey-high, rainbow-hued Buddhas who look down upon their devotees with serene smiles and unseeing eyes.
But that would be tomorrow.
Right now, I only had enough energy to drag my suitcase into my hotel room, climb beneath the covers of an unusually firm bed, and console myself with the thought that I had at last reached Shangri-la.
If you go
Air New Zealand operates daily direct services to Shanghai from Auckland. One-way, economy airfares start from $862 per adult, including taxes. To get to Yunnan province, Air NZ offers a connection to Lijiang city using its Star Alliance partners Air China and Shenzhen Airlines. For further information, visit airnewzealand.co.nz.
