The biggest monastary in Southwest China

I went to visit this Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Shangri-La, which is called Gyalthan (I think) in Tibetan. It houses over 600 monks and was undergoing some construction while I was there. I also had to pay a lot of money (comparatively) to get access, which really differed from the donation based model I found in India.

The next day, back in Kunming, Kathryn and I went to the Western Hills with another friend, where we climbed hills (obviously) to get a great view of the city and the lake. The dragon gate was supposed to be the big attraction, but there was a stone forest that caught my eye. Supposedly the entire region was under water at some point, leaving these huge stone formations on top of the mountains.

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