Here comes another photo entry. I think I fixed the last entry so the pics should be viewable. After my last post on the 4th, we travelled south to Xishuangbanna (西双板纳), which is still in Yunnan province and is bordered by Laos and Myanmar. We liked this area because the weather was nice. I'm not going to post anything about that now b/c I didn't bring those pics w/ me to the Internet bar (网巴). After banna, we went to Dali (大理), which was nice. From there, we went to Lijiang (丽江), which is where I am right now. In this post, I'd like to show pictures from our next two destinations. First, we took a 2.5 hour bus from Lijiang to a town called Qiaotou (桥头), which was the beginning point for our hike up the Tiger Leaping Gorge (虎跳峡). We had six people in our group and three big packs carrying our goods, so we alternated in carrying the packs up the mountain. Some of the hiking was pretty intense, while other parts were flat. The scenery was amazing in all parts. It was a two day hike. We stayed in a hotel at the halfway point the first night. Here are some pics from the hike:

Views of Jade Snow Mountain (Yunnan)

Below: tough_actin_tinactin, liukai, heybillman, daytosaybye, TheElder, & me on hike up Tiger Leaping Gorge

Below: Our path is blocked by a pride of mountain goats.

Below: View of Tiger Leaping Gorge separated by chang jiang (长江) river

Below: Eating breakfast at our hotel at halfway point: me, TheElder, heybillman, daytosaybye, tough_actin

After the two days of hiking, we took a three hour taxi van to Shangri La (香格里拉), which was originally written about as one of the most beautiful places in the world. Nobody knows where the true Shangri La is. We went to the Chinese Shangri La. The local people are all Tibetan, as it's near Tibet. The area is surrounded by towering mountains. During our time there, we went to a huge Buddist temple and mingled with the locals. Below is a picture of the area from the top of the temple:

Below: Child monks sweeping the floors of the temple.

The picture below can be explained in a short story. Jon, da yu, and I were standing and watching the kid monks sweeping the grounds, and a lama (monk) w/ authority walked up to us. The lama is pictured below. He didn't say anything, he just grabbed Jon's beard and gripped it firmly. As the lama held Jon's beard, I laughed and da yu took out her camera to take a picture (but didn't get a picture). The lama let go of Jon's face, noticed that da yu was trying to photograph him, and proceeded to take a hold of Jon's beard again to pose for the picture. The result is seen below:

Next stop: Back to Dali tomorrow, then to Kunming the next day. Then off to Hunan to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Will update as necessary.