Shangri-la

[Monoriu]

Did you take any part of that elevated rail line? That is one thing I want to do if I ever travel to China.

No.  I went to Yunnan.  The rail line connects Lhasa with Qinghai, many hundreds of miles from where I went to. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qingzang_railway

[Monoriu]

By the way, I was under the impression that Shangri-La is a fictional place...

From wiki-

The county was formerly called Zhongdian County (Chinese: 中甸县 Zhōngdiàn Xiàn) but was renamed in 2001 after the fictional land of Shangri-La in the 1933 James Hilton novel Lost Horizon, in an effort to promote tourism in the area. The local Tibetan population refers to it by the name Gyalthang (Tibetan: རྒྱལ་ཐང་རྫོང་). "Shangri-La" or "Zhongdian" may also refer to Jiantang Town (建塘镇 Jiàntáng Zhèn), the capital of the county.

[Monoriu]

Pudacuo National Park was the highlight of our trip. 

http://www.seeyunnan.net/view.asp?id=150

Imagine - suffering from headache, having taken tablet after tablet of panadol extra every 3 hours, farting every minute due to indigestion, I saw...gasp...STAIRS in the park.  That was the only part of the trip that I HAD to breathe oxygen.  Parts of the park was over 4,000 metres above sea level.  5 steps up, 1 minute of rest and oxygen.

The pictures lied BTW.  The meadow was littered with cattle dung    But otherwise it was worth it.

Just before we left, the bus guide told us that we only saw a very small part of the park.  Not talking about geographic coverage - it's because you guys had yet to see how the place looked in the other 3 seasons. 

Damn right.