Lost Horizon is the name of our trekking agency based in Kunming in South-West China. We are a local agency whose manager (and main guide) is a french citizen living in China for more than 11 years and exploring west China mountains for many years.
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But Lost Horizon is also a best seller written in 1933 in which the author James Hilton describes a utopia set in a Tibetan lamasery located in a fertile valley, lost in the middle of the mountains that he named by the sweet and poetic name of Shangri-La.
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Today, a couple of cities located in Tibetan areas claim to be the "real Shangri-La". We can name among others Zhongdian in northern Yunnan, which went as far as changing its name to Shangri-La in order to boost tourism. There is also Yading and its three sacred peaks flirting with the altitude of 6000m. Some experts agree on a further north location in the middle of the Kunlun mountains, between the provinces of Tibet and Qinghai...
Without claiming that we want to find the "real Shangri-La", these are the places of the Chinese wild West with mystical resonance which invite you to dream that we wish to make you discover.
Founder and guide for Lost Horizon trekking agency, Mathieu lives in China since 2010. He has been a keen hiker and mountaineer since he was 15 and has already discovered and climbed many deserts and mountains all over the world. Sahara & Gobi deserts, the Alps from North to South and East to West, Yosemite, Nepal, the Andes until the top of Aconcagua (6962m), and of course west China and the Tibetan plateau.
With a degree in cartography engineering, he first ended up in Shanghai and Hong Kong before he decided to live from his passion. Mathieu has now been guiding groups of all size on trekking routes for more than eight years and decided to found the trekking agency Lost Horizon so he can keep living from what he loves: taking hikers from all over the world to discover isolated mountains and magnificent landscapes in west China.
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In order to guide you in the safest conditions even in the most isolated and highest areas, Mathieu followed a training that makes him a medical correspondent of IFREMMONT (to learn more about it, go on our dedicated page about Safety).
