Shika Snow Mountain @ Shangri-La

Shika Snow Mountain is a 5km high peak about 7 km west of Shangri-La. They sell appropriate cold weather clothing and oxygen tanks at the base, it's also equipped with a gondola, and wooden pathways all around the peak to make it an easy trip for any tourist.The gondola ride up consists of two parts and takes about 30 minutes total, giving you enough time to get to know the other tourists and take pictures of the terrain as you get closer too the top.

What was hard to tell from the bottom, is that today the top was inside of a cloud. The light faded around us as we neared the top, and when we finally were able to unload and look outside, all we could see is the silhouette of the rocky peak and Tibetan cloth decorations blowing violently in the wind around the shrines leading up to it.


 
Walking around in this wind was mildly exhausting, I would lean full force into it to prevent from falling over only to have it suddenly stop leaving me falling over the other direction. I put up with this and the cold while I ventured around to the other areas besides the peak, and luckily after 20 minutes or so a break in the cloud made the peak visible again.






Cold, lacking oxygen, and having trouble standing against the wind, I made my way over to the shrine at the peak. The view from here was incredibly worth the inconvenience, I hung out alternating between beer and my oxygen tank for 10 minutes while I navigated around the shrine and snapped photos of the surroundings.



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