Notes: In 1933 James Hilton published a novel "Lost Horizon" about a trip to a mythical country near Tibet in the Himalayans. It was made into a film by Frank Capra in 1937. The Chinese government, as a tourism promotion, has decided that Zhongdian county in Diqing (or Diqen), a Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in the northwestern part of Yunnan Province, China. is the most likely place for Shangri-La as described in the novel. It has renamed Zhongdian county to Xianggelila county. The Chinese English (Pinyin) spelling of Shangri-La is Xianggelila.  They have also renamed the capital of Zhongdian county, which had the same name as the county - Zhongdian, or sometimes called Zhongdian City - to Shangrila (Xianggelila) as well.  Lijiang, also in Yunnan province and nearby Zhongdian is also believed by some to be the Shangri-La that Hilton wrote about. Some tours take in both Zhongdian and Lijiang.

Tourists can expect information in English on travel to Shangri-La to use any, or a combination of all three names for the area and city: Shangrila (or Shangri-La), Xianggelila, and Zhongdian.  To confuse things further, the original Tibetan name for Zhongdian - Gyalthang - is also starting to be used again. By the way, the name of the airport at Zhongdian city is the Diqing Airport. 

Shangri-La has now, in the short space of a few years, become the most popular tourist attraction in China.  It has spectacular scenery, most within a day's trip out of Shangri-La city. Unfortunately, some of the quiet and charm in the renamed city of Shangrila continues to be eroded by commercialization in an effort to cater to the ever-increasing number of tourists. 

Another Shangri-La.  Most historians believe that James Hilton got his ideas for Lost Horizon from a series of articles written by Austrian-American explorer and botanist, Joseph Rock written for the National Geographic in 1929.  However, James Hilton is also reported to have made a trip in 1931 to the beautiful remote Hunza valley in North Pakistan that lies in the shadow of the great Karakorum mountain range next to the Himalayas. Tourist promotions call it Shangri-La Valley.  Unfortunately, travel in Pakistan is extremely dangerous at this time.