Taiyuan to Hohhot to Beijing - An Inner Mongolian Adventure - Also Haerbin

Sam and I made it to Hohhot (the capital city of Inner Mongolia) feeling a little weary after our second sleeper train in 2 days. After a brief rest, we went out in search of a tour company to ask about the Naadam festival and trips to the grasslands. Unfortunately, the Lonely Planet, usually such a traveller's bible let us down in some important respects.

Firstly, the map to the tour company was rather inaccurate, which is understandable considering that they tried to fit maps to every notable place in all of China into one book, but still annoying when you're trying to find something.

Secondly, the book informed us that Hohhot was a good place to see the festival which was celebrated at the horseracing grounds there. In actual fact, there was no evidence of festival at all in the city, and the tour operator told us that it was only happening at one of the grasslands about 200km away.

Thirdly, it told us we should be able to get a tour for a 200-300 RMB, but in order to get to the grasslands where the festival was, we would need a private car and a guide and the total cost would be more like 1100 RMB each, insanely over our daily budget. He managed to bring this down to around 800, or 700 for a tour to a closer grassland, but in the end we had to leave because there was no way he could come down to our price and no way we could go up to his.

Instead we found a public bus to the town (although it barely qualified as a village by English standards) of Zhaohe on the nearest grassland Xilamuren (still 120km away), and hoped that fate would smile on us when we got there. We were rewarded by some lucky coincidences and an amazing time, all for about 300 RMB, a much more reasonable price.

The 2hr bus journey took us through some stunning scenery, rolling (chalk or limestone?) hills that were easy to picture some millennia ago as the bottom of an ancient sea. Chinese driving, which is pretty terrifying in cities, became even crazier on the windy hill roads and our bus driver frequently overtook several large trucks at a time, on a corner, on a bridge, blaring his horn all the while. Another interesting feature of the bus was that the air conditioning only worked when the driver had his foot on the accellerator.

When we got off the bus we were immediately approached by a woman who asked us if we wanted to go horseriding and motioned us towards a small minivan. We said ok and got on the bus along with a Chinese man called Jang, who turned out to be invaluable to us, since he could speak passable English and therefore translated for us throughout the trip.

A short drive away we came to a yurt camp overlooking Zhaohe and were shown into a yurt and given some very milky (yeuch) tea. A yurt, in case you didn't know, is a round sort of tent, although all the yurts here are now more permanent structures on a concrete base. Jang translated for us and we ordered some lunch (a very difficult task if you're faced with a menu in Chinese characters I can tell you) and negotiated a price for horseriding.

We ended up riding for 3-4 hours around the grasslands on what were essentially ponies, since the horses of Inner Mongolia are rather smaller than the English variety. My horse was the tallest and seemed to have a thing for Sam's horse since he was rather protective of it. Not sure if the motive was sexual, since all the horses were male, but when Jang's horse came anywhere near mine, mine would spin around and try and nip it in the face or neck. This was quite challenging for me, because I've only been pony trekking a couple of times before so I wasn't quite prepared for my horse to suddenly lurch off to one side in a violent assault on a fellow rider's mount.

Also very different from previous pony trekking experiences was the fact that the horses occasionally went very fast indeed. None of this trotting gently round the countryside with a hard hat for us. No, our guide (an expert horseman) would hiss "Sshh Sshh" and the horses would immediately speed up, generally to a canter, but occassionally when we whipped them into a frenzy into a full gallop. We all tried as best we could to hang on and find a position that didn't involve bouncing up and down like a crazy thing when the horse went at all above walking pace. It was exhausting but good fun.

And the scenery was wonderful, a clear blue sky (the first unsmoggy sky I've seen in China) stretching over an endless, flat, scrubby grassland punctuated by sandy paths and trails forged by horses, cars and motorbikes (for the people of the grassland have all the mod cons these days). The landscape looked lifeless at first but soon I noticed insects everywhere including insects that looked like crickets or grasshoppers on the ground but had markings like butterflies when they leapt into the air. When we stopped I also saw small birds (chasing the crickets) and butterflies, and a tiny frog the size of my thumb, and a large stag beetle that was trying to burrow under a mound of grass.

We stopped at a sort of farmstead with a little lake where a huge group of Chinese tourists were trying on traditional Mongolian dress. We tried some on too and I have a picture of us looking very silly which I'll show anyone who is interested. After we took the clothes off they informed us that we had to pay 30 RMB for the privilege. We bargained them down to 20. It seems that the selling technique of the grasslands is to give you something or let you go somewhere and then charge you for it afterwards. We didn't really mind that they were trying to make money out of us, since most of their livelihood seems to depend on tourism these days, but it's hard to shake the notion that someone is trying to rip you off when they want to charge you 3 RMB just for looking at their lake. Still, this didn't even come close to spoiling the experience for us.

We returned to our horses and carried on to a field with tussocks of grass and a couple of cows (which made the view look rather English) and after another bonerattling horseride back to the yurt camp ate roast lamb and scrambled egg and tomatoes (a common dish here) and rice, and had a long nap. Our tiredness was mostly heat-induced, as we were rather sunburnt by this stage.


Later we went and looked around Zhaohe and saw a Buddhist temple there, and bargained for some souvenirs. Later still we went to a nearby yurt camp where the locals were putting on a musical show for tour buses full of Chinese people, like a sort of Inner Mongolian cabaret.


Unfortunately we turned out to be the main attraction here, along with 2 rather tall Dutch boys. Chinese people openly stare at foreigners and often come up and ask for photos (especially if the foreigner is particularly foreign looking) and they have no notion that this could be considered at all rude. After about a million pictures had been taken and after my very shoddy Mandarin had been tested to its absolute limit the dancing and singing finally started and the Chinese tourists (most of whom were very very drunk) kept clambering up onto the stage with the performers to have photos taken with them, while they singing and dancing. If I had been trying to perform up there I would very quickly have resorted to violence, but the Mongolians seemed used to it, although a little weary all the same.


On the bus on the way back to Hohhot, I sat for a short time next to a small boy who leaned forward to his mother and grandmother and whispered excitedly, saying "waiguoren" (foreigner) over and over. It was very funny, and I mind much less when a child stares or is interested in me. It's quite amusing to watch their open-mouthed shock when they see you, or their genuine curiosity about what sort of creature you might be. Still, having grown up in London and being quite used to all sorts of people from all sorts of places, it's still very strange to be such an object of curiosity and fascination (although not so far hostility) simply because you look so different.


From Hohhot we got a train to Beijing and went to see the Forbidden City, a huge walled palace complex that will be familiar to viewers of Chinese films. Everything they say about Beijing air quality is true. On our first afternoon we climbed up a bell tower and later a hill with a pagoda overlooking the Forbidden City and the view from both was completely shrouded in smog. The contrast was especially great because we had come from Hohhot where the sky is much clearer - a brilliant cloudless blue on the day we left.


From Beijing we went to Haerbin, a Russian influenced town in the northeast of China. They have a splendid Russian church and some beautiful buildings, which it was very nice to walk through at sunset. Yesterday morning (Saturday 2 August) we went to a Siberian Tiger park, which is ostensibly set up to save the tigers and let them into the wild, but which is more a sort of safari for tourists. Still, despite the dubious scientific merit of the place, it was amazing to see the tigers so close, and there were hundreds of them, as well as a few lions and other big cats. Also, it was good to see that most of the tigers looked healthy, which was not at all the case when I went to Shanghai zoo where all the animals look rather drab and unhappy.


After the tigers we dropped in on Haerbin's Science Museum which is very very cool indeed. It has lots of interactive exhibits (just like Launch Pad at the Science Museum in London for anybody who remembers it) and it felt like being a kid again let loose in a place with lots of cool toys.


We then got an afternoon train back to Beijing (since due to the annoying way the Chinese train system is set up we couldn't get a night train) and eventually got to our hostel here at about 12.30 last night, by which time I had developed a horrid cold. Because of this I spent all today in bed instead of going out to see all the amazing sights Beijing has to offer, so I'm currently feeling a little sorry for myself.


Tomorrow, we were going to do a 10km walk along the Great Wall, but I don't think I'll be up to this, so I think Sam will do that and I will go to a more touristy, less physically intensive bit of wall instead and see if I can fit in some more sightseeing in the city as well, since I missed out today.


We're going back to Shanghai on Tuesday night (on another hardseater train woo), so I'll be able to seem some friends there before I fly home on Saturday afternoon. I arrive early Sunday morning and I'm looking forward to seeing you all very very soon.