On behalf of the author:

Hi Angela. We followed a local tour from Chan Brothers and Balagezong was one of the destinations included in the package. You can read more about the package here. https://www.kohadventures.com/wordpress/2024/10/8d7n-yunnan-kunming-dali-lijiang-shangri-la

Shangri-La has the highest altitude compared to Kunming, Dali and Lijiang around 3160m. We started taking high altitude pills from Kunming and we moved from lower to higher elevation so we are more or less acclimatized by the time we reached Shangri-La. However we were still advised to purchase at least 2 bottles of oxygen and we still require oxygen when climbing up to Songzanlin Monastery.