ah, the next few stops on my trip. i reached dali, which was just as i remembered it, chill backpacker hostels and chinese women offering you pot in the street. i was determined not to stay long, as i already spent a good four days there during my last visit, so i only spent about a day. i did take a nice bikeride around the nearby lake though, finding an unmapped path that traced the shore and went through all of the beautiful old villages along the lake. on the way back, i discovered that i'd biked too far and was totally exhausted, so i stopped to get some food. the owner invited me to eat w/ him and his friends, a meal which consisted of boiled pig skin and another part of the pig i couldn't identify. they kept encouraging me to take a shot of baijiu with them, so finally i did, then another. then i said i had to be on my way, and they said goodbye. uh, i headed back to my hostel, then took a late bus to lijiang which meant that i got in at about 10 o'clock, to a dark rainy night. i hate arriving at cities like that, so i found a hostel as quickly as possible, and passed out.
the next morning i walked over to the hostel i had planned to stay at, Mama Naxi's, which was pretty hard to find so i'm glad i hadn't tried the night before. on arrival though, i ran into a guy who was about to do tiger leaping gorge that day with a few others. i was worried about doing it alone, so i decided to join them. without ever checking into the hostel, i was on my way. tiger leaping gorge was amazing, and i am sooo glad that i had the opportunity to do it. it wasn't the gigantic hike that LP makes it out to be. it only took us two days, and the first day we started at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. but it was a beautiful walk looking at a gorgeous mountain range. by the time we finished i was pretty exhausted. we caught a ride back to lijiang with an older british man who'd rented a cab for himself and said he'd share it for the price of taking a bus back. as chinese buses are dirty and filled with smoking, vomiting locals, we said sure.
now i'm back in lijiang, where i'll spend a day relaxing before taking an 8 hour bus ride to lugu hu, a remote lake in northeastern yunnan.