Upper and Lower Yubeng sit about 20 minutes' walk apart, divided by a steep-sided gorge that gives the settlement its split personality. Upper Yubeng faces the mountains and serves as the staging point for the treks to Base Camp and Ice Lake -- an eight-hour round trip through alpine forest and meadow. Lower Yubeng looks downvalley toward the Lancang River and anchors the trail to Sacred Waterfall, a six-hour pilgrimage route that Tibetan Buddhists walk to honor Kawagarbo. For the truly committed, Holy Lake offers an unobstructed view of the peak and much of the rest of the range, though reaching it requires a full day of hard hiking at altitude. Guesthouses in both halves of the village are simple -- dorm beds run around 20 to 35 yuan, doubles between 100 and 250 -- and restaurants serve food at prices inflated by the cost of hauling everything over the pass. Barley wine, brewed locally, is the drink of choice. It is an acquired taste.

Getting to Yubeng is the first test. From Shangri-La, a bus takes three to six hours to reach Deqin, the county seat perched above the Lancang gorge. From there, or from the viewpoint town of Fei Lai Si, travelers continue to the trailhead. The traditional route runs from Xidang: 12 kilometers uphill to a mountain pass, then 6 kilometers down into the village. Depending on fitness and altitude acclimatization, the hike takes four to eight hours. The altitude matters -- Yubeng sits above 3,000 meters, and the pass is higher. Trekkers count their progress by the numbered utility poles along the trail: 105 poles to the crest, 50 down to the village. Jeeps once offered a shortcut, but road construction has periodically closed the Xidang route, making the alternative trail from Ninong -- 17 kilometers, entirely downhill when heading out -- the only option. Tibetan monks and pilgrims share the paths with Chinese tourists and foreign backpackers, all of them moving at the pace the mountains dictate.

The three main destinations around Yubeng each require a full day. Sacred Waterfall draws pilgrims who believe its waters carry the blessing of Kawagarbo. The trail from Lower Yubeng follows the river through forest before climbing to a cascade that drops from ice fields high above. Ice Lake, reached from Upper Yubeng, is a glacial tarn set in a cirque beneath the peaks -- still and turquoise, rimmed by moraine and prayer flags. Holy Lake sits higher still, demanding the most effort and rewarding it with the broadest panorama of the Meili range. A typical visit to Yubeng therefore takes three to five days from Fei Lai Si: one day hiking in, one day per destination, one day hiking out. The landscape shifts constantly -- alpine forest, pasture, glacial rubble, waterfalls -- and the scale of the mountains above makes even experienced trekkers recalibrate their sense of what "dramatic" means. Yubeng is one of the most popular trekking destinations in the Three Parallel Rivers region, and the pilgrimage infrastructure built over centuries ensures no one walks alone.

Yubeng has always drawn visitors, but for most of its history those visitors were Tibetan pilgrims circumambulating Kawagarbo. The mountain is sacred in Tibetan Buddhism, and the trails around its base form a kora -- a devotional circuit that can take weeks to complete. Yubeng sits at the heart of this route. In recent decades, Chinese domestic tourism has transformed the village. New guesthouses are being built, the access road from Xidang has been under periodic construction, and what was once a remote pilgrimage stop now appears on social media feeds and travel apps. The coexistence is not always comfortable but has its own grace. At the Xidang Hot Spring hostel, budget travelers share dormitories with monks. On the trail to Sacred Waterfall, backpackers with trekking poles walk alongside pilgrims performing prostrations. The village economy runs on both audiences -- caterpillar fungus and matsutake mushrooms for the pilgrims, guesthouse beds and packed lunches for the trekkers.