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Aerial views of Songzanlin Monastery, a 300-year-old Tibetan Buddhist complex with seven hundred monks. It is located at 10,500 ft., just outside the town of Shangri La (formerly known as Zhongdian). The government has been stimulating development in the area and the community surrounding the monastery has benefitted from this, too. The monastery is building a large complex of Tibetan-style housing for tourists just behind the monastery, and local families each get all the revenue from the tourist parking lot (5 days parking revenue per family). Most of the farming has been stopped around the monastery as people are making more money from tourism and jobs in town than they did from subsistence farming only a few years ago. The smoke is from the morning breakfast fires.

Filename
STNMTZ_20061025_7046.tif
Copyright
©2006 George Steinmetz
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4368x2912 / 36.4MB
www.georgesteinmetz.com
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China Air
Aerial views of Songzanlin Monastery, a 300-year-old Tibetan Buddhist complex with seven hundred monks. It is located at 10,500 ft., just outside the town of Shangri La (formerly known as Zhongdian). The government has been stimulating development in the area and the community surrounding the monastery has benefitted from this, too. The monastery is building a large complex of Tibetan-style housing for tourists just behind the monastery, and local families each get all the revenue from the tourist parking lot (5 days parking revenue per family). Most of the farming has been stopped around the monastery as people are making more money from tourism and jobs in town than they did from subsistence farming only a few years ago. The smoke is from the morning breakfast fires.

All images ©George Steinmetz. Please contact us for usage.