Going to the Grasslands

  Hohhot, China
Monday, July 23, 2007

Joss and his pet cow

Hohhot is in northern China and is known for it's grasslands.  Originally Joss and I had hoped to go to Mongolia and China, but we didn't think we'd have enough time for that.  So instead we decided to visit the Inner Mongolian Grasslands in China.  It was like visiting Wisconsin, without my friends, family, car, favorite restaurants, and flushable toilets.


It was horrible.  They claimed it hadn't rained in 3 years (i think they meant 3 weeks) and there was barely any grass in site.

Searching... for anything...

  Of course, there really wasn't much of anything in site.  A couple of huts, that they called 'yurts', a pile of rocks, and a pile of bricks.  We had 24 hours to kill and amused ourselves greatly with the few things in site.  We took lots of pictures.  We laughed a lot.  We counted down the minutes until we could return to civilization. 


The best (or worst) part of the Inner Mongolian Grassland tour was the company.  We were accompanied by an elderly couple from the U.K..  The woman (Sheila) was maybe 60 or 70, and was working towards her Ph.D in China.  The man (Chris), her boyfriend, was maybe 50, and loved to fascinate us with endless

Riding a Camel

tidbits of information that he had memorized from the history channel or old issues of National Geographic.  The guy had a story for everything, and loved to interrupt to tell us about "the most interesting thing that he had just heard..."  We weren't the only ones getting annoyed, even Sheila was rolling her eyes and trying to get him back on course.  

Farewell Grasslands

I think it was a good break for Joss and I to run into them on our trip.  It gave each of our voices a rest, because we simply couldn't get a word in edgewise with the two of them around.  Hanging out with Sheila and Chris also made us immensely thankful that we were traveling with each other, and no one else.  Later in the week, when things got rough- we just reminded ourselves that, at least we were no longer being stalked by Sheila and Chris.