Shangri-La Along the Tea Road to Lhasa

The legendary Chamagudao, or Tea-Horse Road, winds through dizzying mountain passes, across famed rivers like the Mekong and the Yangtze, and past monasteries and meadows in a circuitous route from Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces in western China to the Tibetan capital city of Lhasa. Actually a network of roads, trails, and highways, rather than one distinct route, the Chamagudao once stretched for almost 1,400 miles—a conduit along which the historic trade between the mighty Chinese Empire and the nomadic Tibetans linked remote villages and ethnic groups. Following the Chamagudao, photographer Michael Yamashita takes a rare and enchanting look into the changing world of Tibet—ancient and modern, sacred and secular—before the legends and mysteries of the Tea-Horse Road disappear into the Tibetan mist.