The old town of Shangrila is definitely set up for tourists although it wasn't busy when we arrived. The architecture is very Tibetan and there we found some interesting places to roam about although frankly the sights we saw in the countryside around the town were far more interesting than the town itself. The next morning we rented bikes and went for a long loop ride around the lake/pasture land outside town. One of the surprising things was the quantity of timber we saw stacked up for use or in the process of being used in home construction. The hills surrounding the city are barren, deviod of anything more than scrub yet somehow there are thousands of huge logs everywhere - some more than a metre in diameter. The locals must certainly go to a lot of effort to procure this timber. It certainly made me consider the sustainability of using so much wood in a seemingly tree-free place. This area gave me my first exposure to Tibetan home construction methods and I was intrigued with the way they build their homes using rammed earth and huge timber beams and columns. I was lucky enough to find some friendly construction guys who let me into the home they were building to see the process up close. It's certainly a very different approach to home building than making homes from light timber like we do in NZ.
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