Inner Mongolia Huitengxile Grassland

Journey update: .. Datong > Hohot > Huitengxile > Hohot > Taiyuan > Zhengzhou > Xi'an

So we are now in a smoke filled Internet cafe in Hohhot, by 6:00pm we we'll be on a night train heading for Taiyuan. We don't plan to stay in Taiyuan, just a jumping board to our planned destination, Xi'an.

We've just spent two days and one night in Huitengxile, reputedly the most beautiful grassland foreigners can visit. It was amazing, especially as we've been travelling in the east and north-east of China which has been predominantly dirty, over-populated cities. Yuk!

We left our hotel at about 9am in a little minibus filled with the two of us, 2 Japanese guys and a South Korean guy. (We later met up with another minibus with 2 Dutch girls, a Korean/American guy and an older Korean lady) Our guide spoke wonderful English so that was a huge bonus! However he was rather obsessed with getting us to sing songs in the car on the way there... he kept saying "Japan sing song now", then "Ok now you Korea!". It was very funny, the entire 2-day trip he referred to people by their nationality... screaming "Oi Holland, come here!" or whatever. This country-name-calling didn't extend to Kate and I however, for some strange reason he'd decided that we were a lovely couple and needed special treatment - he referred to us as "happy family". So he'd say "OK, happy family I meet you in 10 minutes, OK?".

After a 2-hour ride through some gorgeous lands (mountains, green hills, rivers etc) we finally arrived at the gatepost to the grasslands. It was so beautiful, just miles upon miles of grassy plains in all directions, sheep and horses dotted all over and nothing else to be seen. Well except the environmentally friendly wind turbines! As we drove further in we started to see small groupings of yurts here and there. Some were rather touristy, more like round concrete houses than anything else but, luckily for us, we stayed in slightly more authentic ones. They still had concrete floors but with material sides and roof with beautiful designs.

A yurt


The "happy family" were given a yurt all to ourselves... continuing the special treatment (I'm not complaining!), which was nice because we could then make a nice big bed in the middle so we could sleep away from the sides (where all the nasty man eating bugs live!).
After we'd all settled in, we were given lunch in a big communal yurt in the centre of our little 'village'... I went in rather sceptical as I'd heard from the American's we met in Datong that Mongolian food consisted purely of mutton, with salty milk tea on the side! True enough, there was the mutton, all on the bone ready to be gnawed. But luckily enough, there were enough tasty side dishes to fill all of us - lots of veggies and other Chinese delights. I must say though, that I really enjoyed the mutton, I was filling up after almost 3 years of no lamb!! (But no bloody mint sauce!)

Kate had been craving steamed buns before we arrived and there were even some of them on the table for her!! Lovely lunch. I also enjoyed the milk tea... lovely black tea with milk, all hot and ready to be drunk, with salt instead of sugar. Strange, but you get used to it. Kate was less impressed, fussy eater that one! It's a traditional Mongolian drink which is served throughout the day and with every meal... but poor old Kate just couldn't stomach it. Even when the wind picked up and it was really cold outside she couldn't bring herself to drink it, I drank it and stayed relatively warm. Yum!!

After lunch we were given free time until the evening, and after chatting with all our new tour buddies, we all decided that this was a perfect time to go horse riding.
I was excited, but nervous as I'd never had lessons nor even ridden a horse. Kate was better off as she'd learned to ride until her horse died and stopped riding.

Neither of us needed to have worried however... the Mongolian horses were really small and we weren't even allowed to ride freely... we were all led by the horses owner! A little disappointing but nothing compared to what happened to Kate and I next...
We all set off in a big group, all of us planning on a one-hour ride (too expensive for any longer!). Martin and I soon noticed that we were lagging behind the others though, and wondered why?? Kate's horse, poor thing, kept stopping and trying to turn around as her foal had not followed us so she was worried. We knew our guide had spoken to the two people leading our horses and told them to keep the "happy family" together, but this was still no reason to seperate us from the rest of the group (also only riding for 1 hour). After a while we were turned around and headed off back to the yurts, strange considering we'd only been riding for about 20 minutes. After taking us back past the yurts, collecting the foal on the way, Kate made a comment (Her Chinese is excellent now, thanks Solly!) about the time and they agreed to continue walking us a little further.

This entire time the woman leading Kate's horse bugged her by banging her leg and asking for money. We thought that they were trying to say that after the ride, we should give them the money directly instead of giving it to the offical guy back at camp. I had no problem with that, thinking that unless we did that they wouldn't see half the money we paid, but Kate was still really irritated by the constant leg-banging!
As we walked across the silly little bit of grass behind our yurts, us thoroughly annoyed that we hadn't stuck with our friends, my horse suddenly fell over!! Kate'd noticed it's leg was a little strange but hadn't realised it was that serious. The whole horse collapsed under me, all four legs crumpled. I got such a shock, but luckily didn't get hurt, luckily I jumped off as the horse hit the ground. We were now pissed off. I wasn't getting on the horse, I told the horse-man to shut up, angry at him for allowing the horse to be so sick and we walked back. I felt terrible for the horse and fuming at the situation. Of course they wanted all the money, we refused and tried to pay just over half the cost. My horse was broken! Anyway after some discussions we paid a little under the original price, from 100 Yuan to 80 Yuan for 1 hour each. And our friendly guide promised to give us another free ride in the morning. Not with the crappy people we had before!

Mongolian man and his horses


We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting with our new friends inside a yurt and waiting for supper. At 6pm we were driven to a place to watch horse racing and wrestling... but that didn't happen either! The rain had made the ground really wet and slippery so it was too dangerous. Never mind... back to the yurts for dinner and some Mongolian music/alcohol/dancing.

The dinner was nice, pretty much the same as lunch (and more yummy milk tea!), but it was unfortunately accompanied by the strongest, most foul liquor I've ever had to drink. Nobody could bow out of drinking it as it is considered a Mongolian custom, and is presented to you by brightly dressed 'Mongols' with sashes... but Kate did at least manage to swop some of hers with her new Korean friend and fill her glass with water (sneaky!!). The custom dates back to the days of old Ghengis Khan, when he apparently out-drank an opponent and thereby won a battle before it had even began.

Later that evening Kate and I enjoyed some star-gazing (in the cities you just don't see them!) and then played cards with our two new Dutch friends.

The next morning we woke up at 4:30am (as instructed by our guide) and went out to watch the sunrise. It was freezing!! I couldn't believe how cold it was... and the annoying thing was that the sun didn't bloody-well rise till almost 6am!! But by that time we were already back in bed... we'd given up after about 30 minutes. It was lovely and quiet out there, but sitting in a duvet watching the sky not change from bluey-orange to redy-orange wasn't that fun.

To his word the tour man paid for 1 hour each for Kate and I. We had such a great time, the horses were fit, strong and the girls guidig us were lovely. So we felt appeased and high-spirited in the sun and beautiful blue skies.
Kate and I went for a gorgeous walk out into the grasslands... we met a lovely shepard there and just enjoyed the sunshine. It was so lovely that we almost got left behind - we had to practically run back to meet the car at 11:30!

Once back in Hohhot, we spent time just wandering around the city, buying food in the supermarket ready for the train journey, and doing nothing much else!!!

All in all a mixed experience, but we were throughly glad to have had the chance to see Inner Monogila.

Inner Mongolia with roaming sheep



MC