Der Nomade, der seine Herde verließ, um die Welt zu sehen

When Tsebho was growing up as a nomad in Sichuan, the most exciting thing that could happen was a traveller passing through.

His family herded around 170 yaks, moving with the seasons across the grasslands. There were no phones or internet bringing the outside world to him. Instead, there were the people who occasionally arrived on horseback from somewhere else.

His family would invite them to stay, and Tsebho would sit listening to stories of where they'd been and what they'd seen. He got so close that his parents used to tease him: stop, you're going to climb into the visitor's mouth!

Those stories fascinated him because they showed him how much existed beyond the life he knew. And Tsebho wanted to see it for himself.

He left a life he could have been happy in

Tsebho doesn't talk about his nomadic childhood as something he needed to escape.

He rode horses from young, helped with the animals and by 11 was racing horses for owners in neighbouring communities. If he'd stayed, he would probably have become a herder like the generations before him. Even now, he thinks he could have lived that life. But he wanted something else.

Tsebho eventually left Sichuan and spent four years in India learning English. When he returned, speaking Tibetan and English led to work translating for academics studying Tibetan culture, and later to guiding.

Suddenly, he was the traveller. He began moving around China for work, visiting places he'd never seen before and meeting people from around the world.

His parents couldn't quite understand how this counted as a job, so Tsebho used to save his plane tickets and bring them home to show his mother. Each one was proof that this strange life he'd chosen was actually taking him somewhere.

Then he found Shangri-La by accident

While travelling through Yunnan in the early 2000s, a driver mentioned Shangri-La. Tsebho had never heard of it, so he decided to go. He was blown away by the mountains. He'd grown up on open grasslands and had never seen anything like them before. Before he left, he promised himself he'd come back.

I was thinking the whole time about how I was going to get back. I wanted to see those mountains again.

In 2005, Tsebho began exploring the region with his cousin and close friend Gungpo, driving mountain roads and checking out valleys and villages simply to see what was there. Eventually, he met his wife, built a guesthouse and made Shangri-La home.

He still wants to know what's out there

More than 20 years later, Tsebho and Gonpo are still exploring. They regularly head out on recces, taking unfamiliar roads and looking for places they haven't seen before.

That says a lot about how Tsebho likes to travel. He's never been very interested in ticking places off a list. He'd rather walk around a mountain than climb to its summit. He camps in snow and does hikes most of us would consider pretty hardcore, but not because he wants to conquer anything.

I'd rather walk around mountains than climb to summit them… I want to enjoy nature.

Botanists changed the way he looks at the mountains too. They originally hired Tsebho because he knew the terrain well enough to get them into remote areas, and along the way, shared with him about the rare plants they were searching for.

Now, he's somewhat of an amateur botanist himself. He brings a botany book and carries a big Nikon camera on his adventures to look for unusual species.

He'll even stop by the side of the road because he's spotted something flowering. When we travelled with him, he even took us off-route in the hope of finding one particular flower.

This is also how he plans trips for other people. Tsebho doesn't build itineraries around what's trending or what has the highest rating on Xiaohongshu. He'll suggest places travellers have never heard of — sometimes places with no ratings at all, because hardly anyone goes there.

As a boy, he waited for travellers to pass through because he wanted their stories of the outside world. Today, travellers arrive in Shangri-La and get into his car.

He takes them along mountain roads he's spent decades exploring, into villages and family-run places he knows personally, and occasionally on a detour he's only just discovered himself. They tell him about where they've come from. He tells them about the place that became his home.

Explore Shangri-La with Tsebho

We spent six days road-tripping around Shangri-La with Tsebho, and this is exactly why we'd recommend travelling with him.

It's a chance to see a very different side of Shangri-La, by travelling with someone who genuinely loves the place — who'll choose a beautiful mountain road over the faster tunnel, stop for a flower, and introduce you to small guesthouses and family-run places he's built relationships with over the years.

And it’s also a lovely chance for you to swap stories with Tsebho, and learn a little about how life looks on the other side of the world.

Shangrila Outdoorsman

6-Day Shangri-La Road Trip with a Tibetan Guide

From $3,530.87 USD / group of 2