After three weeks of pondering and waiting it's finally time to leave. I walk to the bus stop with C. to buy the ticket because the lady behind the counter cannot read Latin letters. Not even my translation app helps.

Jinghong is a young city. If you want to know something historical about this area, you have to follow the minorities. The most prominent here are the Dai. One morining...

One of the biggest gifts that C. and D. give me is the introduction to Chinese tea. I spend some time looking at the world map in the common room while C. prepares it.

I follow C. through the hot streets of Jinghong, smiling. We got out of bed early today, to experience the market in full swing. Although it's just 7 o'clock, the sweat is dripping from my forehead and my spine.

I'm sitting in the dark in one of my host's dorms. From the street, I hear the karaoke bar around the corner and the subtle noise of the night market. For every traveller, these sounds are a lure. For me, the bait has lost its pull.

The Stone Forest tears a big hole in my budget. First, I decide not to visit it at all. But meeting N. makes a trip out of the city seem possible. I decide against my initial gut feeling and am ultimately convinced by the beautiful photos. It's one of the excursions that I bitterly regret.

Kunming is a big city. Not in the eyes of the Chinese, of course. It has only 6.7 million inhabitants, after all. This is common in China. Once more I marvel at the relativity of all things, size in particular.

From the center of Lhasa, I fight my way to the station. The train station square is vast. To get to the entrance I have to walk in serpentine lines across the square, through two security checkpoints and into a separate building to get my ticket.

Lhasa is a special place. Here the beggars walk around with bags full of money (even if they are filled only with penny notes) and the locals wear Indian cowboy hats.

The roof of the world is very different from what I imagined. The mountains in Tibet look like the perfect backdrop to car adverts. Like the Swiss Alps minus the Christmas trees and alpine huts.