Shangri-La Culture and Service


Cultural Immersion and Dedicated Service in Yunnan's Tibetan Autonomous Region

China’s newest program, Shangri-La Culture and Service, begins as your plane touches down amongst the dramatic Himalayan peaks surrounding Shangri-la Old Town. Although outside of Tibet Province, Shangri-La is dominated by the vibrant Tibetan culture, with prayer flags waving in the streets, active Tibetan temples overlooking the town from three different sides, and a three-story human powered golden prayer wheel spinning 24-hours a day above the ancient cobbled streets. Get to know this city well, as it will be your base during your time in the region

Service in the Mountains
In spite of its rich culture and stunning mountain vistas, this region is one of China’s poorest.  On this program, your group will be partnering with two different NGOs to provide service where needed in the area. Our first stop will be a school for orphans perched on a mountainside along the banks of Jinsha River. The students at this orphanage come from across China’s Tibetan Autonomous Regions (T.A.R.), including Tibet, Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu, and Qinghai provinces. The orphanage, opened three years ago, already has 70 children from the ages of three to eleven, with two paid teachers and three volunteers. Your projects on this portion of the program may include building stairs from their classroom building to their dormitory building, creating a garbage system, or painting the dorm or classroom buildings. You can also expect to play with the kids each afternoon, teach them English, draw pictures, help in their garden, and get to know their stories with the aid of smiles and games.

For our second project we will head back to Shangri-la to work with the Eastern Tibet Training Institute as they strive to provide Tibetan teenagers from villages across the T.A.R. with the skills they’ll need to succeed in the developing world. The majority of these students are 16-22 years old, and had the opportunity for schooling as children, but were forced to drop out after middle school to help support their families. With too much knowledge to find a life of village farming satisfying, they have sought out the Eastern Tibet Training Institute (ETTI) to gain the skills they’ll need to move on. Most of ETTI’s students continue on to work in hotels, restaurants, as tour guides, or find opportunities as entrepreneurs, enabling them to send money home for their siblings to continue their studies. Your time with ETTI will be spent augmenting their classes with English practice, working on a School Library so their students have access to books and other materials, and working with some of ETTI’s micro-loan recipients. This project is a truly unique opportunity, as you will get to work with students of a similar age to yourself.
Exploring Shangri-La’s Majestic Landscape

No trip to Shangri-la is complete without exploring the amazing natural sites it has to offer. During this program, you will take breaks from your service projects to visit natural hot springs and dramatic white calcite plateaus. Your adventures in Shangri-La will come to an end with a four day trekking circuit high in the surrounding Himalayan foothills.  With the aid of a team of horses and local guides, we will travel across miles of stunning alpine terrain. This four day trek will take you through rapidly disappearing old-growth forest, past sacred Tibetan Alpine lakes, and through villages rarely seen by the outside world. On the third day of your journey, you will find yourself looking across a sea of clouds to the snow-capped peaks of the Tibetan Himalayas. After finishing our trek, we will stop back into the vibrant old town of Shangri-La for one last traditional Tibetan feast before heading home.

For more information e-mail us at china@rusticpathways.com.