Doi Chiang Dao is one of Thailand’s most stunning mountains, a 2,175-metre limestone peak that rises like a behemoth from flat farmland. Every February, it becomes the backdrop to a 10-day festival called Shambhala in Your Heart. Organised by a group of silver-haired, 1960s purist Japanese hippies, the event is set in an Edenic campsite in northern Thailand, where shade trees flank a cool running stream and open-air hot springs are just a 10-minute walk away.
In recent years, Shambhala has become a major gathering for an eccentric panoply of hippie travellers from Thailand and around the region, drawing fire spinners, drummers and musicians for evening performances, while afternoons are filled with practice sessions for an esoteric variety of flow artists who juggle and dance with dragon staffs, poi sticks, rope darts and streaming ribbons.
Though Shambhala was first held in 2010, it was not until 2024 that mainland Chinese youths, free to travel after years of Covid lockdowns, discovered it. Chinese attendance has since snowballed, going from 700 attendees in 2024 to around 4,000 at this February’s festival, accounting for around 40 per cent of all the festivalgoers and comprising the largest single national group, outnumbering even local Thais, according to organisers. One factor in this spike is that Shambhala coincides with the Lunar New Year holiday, a time when many Chinese travel.
