Zhongdian (Shangri-la), day 2

The next morning we visited Ganden Sumtseling Gompa, one of the
largest and most important Tibetan monasteries outside Lhasa. We had
seen the shining golden roofs in the distance when we had climbed the
hill to investigate the spinning prayer wheel. We saw maybe only a
couple dozen of the 600 monks who live there. The complex was made up
of many large and impressive temples, which we walked inside of
clockwise. They usually featured a very large Buddha at the altar,
smaller side shrines, lots of incense, and beautiful murals. We
encountered a group of monks in one temple who were throat-singing,
and others who were chanting their prayers more melodically. Around
and below the complex of temples was a dense village of sorts built
into the hillside. It appeared that it wasn't only monks who inhabited
these buildings.

That afternoon Amy had arranged for us to visit a Tibetan family's
home. The drive out of town took us to increasingly idyllic
surroundings, through fields of barley, flowering mustard (someone
else said rapeseed, maybe it's the same thing), and other crops
and flowers. As we came to a collection of the rectangular Tibetan
houses, our driver started to slow down and shout greetings to
pedestrians in a language that sounded nothing like the Chinese we
were used to hearing. It turned out she was actually related to the
family we were going to visit, and she was speaking Tibetan. This
caught us off guard because she was wearing modern clothes, not the
traditional outfit many locals wore.

We got out of the car and saw a couple yaks and a pig family on the
dirt road, and then were shown into the house. The ground floor of the
house is for animals, the people live on the 2nd floor, and there's a
large attic for storage. There were only a few rooms but the main
living space was huge, with two enormous polished tree trunks
extending through the floor and ceiling. They said these represent the
strength of the mother and father roles holding the family together.

We gathered around the stove on short chairs and benches and were
served sour yak cheese with sugar, yak yogurt, and yak butter tea
(just what it sounds like - tea mixed with yak butter). Also a nice
fluffy flatbread which we dipped into the tea and then into barley
powder. They taught us a few words of Tibetan, which were really hard
to pronounce and would be even harder to spell. The word for yak, for
example, starts with a T sound, ends with a gutteral throat grating
noise, and sounds like an expression of disgust (to an English
speaker, anyway). All in all, we were made to feel like honored
guests. This little Tibetan farming village felt much more worthy of
being called Shangri-la than the bustling city.