Last chance to help this wretched soul: Dunhuang vs. Dali or Xizhou
 

I'm sure I am bothering all of you with the last 3 days of my trip planning, but any thoughts between these 2 destinations for 3 days going from Xi'an for the 2nd. week of November ?

They both seem really neat, but I wonder if Dali would be too rushed to enjoy/ hard to get to.

Thank you for your thoughts.

Dali is very touristy. If you're going in that direction I'd probably pick Lijiang, although it's also very touristy, but the mountains nearby are good. Any chance you could do Tiger Leaping Gorge? (Actually, I preferred my very untouristy bus tour south from Kunming - see wilhelmswords.com/rtw2004 )

Given those choices I think I'd go to Dunhuang for the caves, although 3 days is too long for Dunhuang and too short for Yunnan...

My least favorite stop was Dali, I really enjoyed Lijiang.

Thank you both! Lijiang seems nice, though touristy. Peter N-H says it's very Disney like, Looks beautiful tough. Sigh....too many options!

after much searching, I decided to go for Lijiang. a bit of a pain to go through Kunming and to have to overnite there on the way there, but it looks neat. Dunhuang seemed to far for caves, and there was no flight back for me.
thanks to all again!