Could Shangri La Be Real?

The mythical land of Shangri-La is the novelist James Hilton's fictional account of the legendary Tibetan paradise Shambala. In Hilton's 1933 novel, Lost Horizon, he changes the name of the paradise to Shangri-La. ... Hilton's novel was turned into a hit Hollywood movie and the name Shangri-La came to mean a lost paradise.

Does Shangri-La really exist?

Shangri-La is a fictional place described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton. ... Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise, particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia – an enduringly happy land, isolated from the world.

Where is the real Shangri-La?

Since James Hilton imagined Shangri-La in his bestselling 1933 novel Lost Horizon, a host of Himalayan areas have laid claim to this earthly Eden. But only one place—Zhongdian in China's southwestern Yunnan Province—has officially gone by the name Shangri-La County since 2001.