A Railway Reaches Shangri-La From Lijiang

A railway to Shangri-La opened on 26 November 2023. The line runs for 139 kilometres from Lijiang into the Diqing Tibetan prefecture, in the north-west of Yunnan, which had never had a train service.

The line

The project was approved in 2009 and construction began in July 2014. It was first expected to take six years. Floods, landslides and difficult rock delayed it, and it opened two years later than the revised date. Most of the route is in tunnel or on bridges. Near its midpoint the line crosses the Jinsha River, the upper Yangtze, close to the mouth of Tiger Leaping Gorge. It then climbs to the plateau, and the terminus stands at about 3,300 metres.

There are four stations: Lijiang, Lashihai, Xiaozhongdian and Shangri-La. Trains are designed for 140 kilometres an hour. The journey from Lijiang takes about an hour and twenty minutes, where the road took three to four hours. Through trains run from Kunming in under five hours.

What it changes

The classic journey through this part of China goes from Dali to Lijiang, then north through the gorge to Shangri-La and the monastery of Songzanlin, and on towards the snow peaks on the Tibetan border. Each stage used to mean most of a day in a car. Dali, Lijiang and Shangri-La can now all be reached by train from Kunming, which leaves more days for walking.

The trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge still begins by road from Lijiang or Shangri-La. The lodges beyond the railhead, which are described in our guide to travelling north-west Yunnan lodge to lodge, are also reached by car. In Lijiang itself, Amandayan stands on the hill above the old town.

For travellers

The gain in height is quick. Lijiang is at 2,400 metres and Shangri-La some 900 metres higher, so a night or two in Lijiang first helps with the altitude. Tickets are booked like any other in China, with a passport, and sell out in the holiday weeks of May and October.

The line is planned as the first section of a railway from Yunnan to Tibet. To the south, Kunming is linked by the Laos-China railway to Luang Prabang.