Shangri-La.(expedition in Tibet)

Shangri-La. Just say the word, and it conjures visions of a snowcapped paradise. As a geographic place, Shangri-La never actually existed; it was the setting of James Hilton's 1933 fictional bestseller "Lost Horizon," which was made into an Oscar-winning movie. The film fixed Shangri-La in the Western imagination as a magical place whose denizens lived for centuries--immersed in classical music and back issues of The Times of London--at a secret Tibetan monastery run by a Roman Catholic priest. Writing at a time when war was about to erupt in Asia and Europe, "Hilton tapped into a vision of Tibet as a place where all fantasies could be found," says Donald Lopez, author of "Prisoners of Shangri-La." "The Chinese communist advance into Tibet [in the 1950s] then triggered a sense of loss for a onetime utopia."

In fact, Hilton never went near Tibet. He gathered inspiration for his book partly from articles written by an eccentric American botanist named Joseph Rock, who lived in the Tibetan province of Kham from 1922 to 1949 and served as National Geographic's "man in China." Rock spent his tour tramping across Kham with dozens of followers and a collapsible bathtub. Since then, people from all over the world have attempted to retrace his wanderings in an effort to find Tibet's lost paradise. Now an American expedition, led by mountaineers Peter Klika and Ted Vaill, claims to have found the "real" Shangri-La while traveling in Kham a year ago. "We have identified 22 elements of proof that Hilton's Shangri-La and the place we located are one and the same," declares Vaill, who is helping to make a documentary film about the expedition. The stakes couldn't be higher: locals have been locked in competition over tourist dollars--and rival Shangri-La claims--for years.

What are the telltale signs? The region around Vaill's Shangri-La valley, located in Sichuan province, features a rarefied atmosphere, a striking 6,000-meter "holy" mountain ("magnificent in the full shimmer of moonlight," as the book puts it) and neglected congregations of Tibetan Catholics whose ancestors were converted by 19th-century European missionaries. According to Vaill, it is home to a particular town, also mentioned in the novel that is renowned for its Tibetan tea. As the last of Tibet's three ancient provinces to open its doors to tourism, Kham is still largely wild and unspoiled, a place where wolves and antelope (and bandits) roam. "Kham is much more remote than central Tibet," says Vaill. "Because it's so hard to get to, the Shangri-La valley we found has a purer form of Tibetan culture."

That's in large part because "government rules with a lighter touch there," Vaill says. Reports of religious crackdowns originate largely from central Tibet, now called the Tibet Autonomous Region, with its capital in Lhasa. But more than 50 percent of Tibetans live outside the TAR, in Kham (mostly in today's Sichuan and Yunnan provinces) and Amdo (in Qinghai province). Authorities there appear more tolerant, allowing many photographs of the Dalai Lama to be displayed, for instance, while Lhasa officials have banned images of the exiled Tibetan leader. Religious activity is also less likely to be restricted there: though the government limits the number of monks officially registered in each monastery, some in Kham allow thousands more than their "quota." Says John Ackerly of Washington's International Campaign for Tibet: "The atmosphere of Chinese occupation, and the colonial mentality, is less evident in Kham."

Still, few Tibetans are more wary of the Shangri-La myth than the Dalai Lama's supporters. They worry that its gauzy allure might eclipse the Dalai Lama's more urgent mission to save the Tibetan language and culture. "Since Shangri-La is a mythical place based on writings of an American anthropologist, we think the 'supposed' discovery of Shangri- La in Kham is baseless," says Thubten Samphel, spokesman for the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India. "Tibetans do not believe in the existence of a Shangri-La in Tibet."

For many of them, life is hardly idyllic. "Tibetans are real people with real problems," says ex-physicist Pamela Logan, who in 1997 founded an NGO called the Kham Aid Foundation, which has helped finance Khampa students, preserve ancient art and bring medical care to remote communities. Late last year Kham Aid and other NGOs donated more than 200 wheelchairs to disabled Khampas, ranging from polio-stricken Buddhist monks to a pale 25-year-old paraplegic who had spent his entire life in bed. Wheeled outside into the sun, he burst into smiles- -and his grateful mother burst into tears.

Many Khampas are grappling with the onslaught of modernization. On the dusty streets of a town called Daofu, young monks in maroon robes sit astride shiny motorcycles with religious symbols pasted on the windshields. Chinese Canto-pop music warbles from giant speakers set up in CD shops. Languid Han Chinese "hostesses" apply makeup in squalid karaoke parlors. Upscale Tibetan families proudly use electric juice blenders--instead of traditional wooden butter churns--to prepare ...