Inner mongolia

  Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China
Wednesday, September 3, 2008

just got back from inner mongolia. a bit of an experience. in all honesty, we probably would have been fine had we missed this short trip. we took off from beijing with great anticipation of seeing the famed grasslands that Genghis Khan and grandson Kublai Khan once roamed and ransacked. we had dreams of riding bareback across open fields on the stout short legged mongolian horses. i was particularly looking forward to sitting inside a yurt

yurt

sipping fire water with the nomadic natives over and boiling stew of mongolian mutton hotpot as the the crisp northern winds shook the portable tents. BUT, our two night three day trip to inner mongolia was not exactly as we had envisioned it.

technically speaking, inner mongolia is a province of china. but the lifestyle and landscape are much more like that of mongolia itself, the independent country just to the north. eunice and i set off for hohhot, the capital, via a 12 hour overnight train from beijing. 12 hours doesn't seem as bad considering we rode a hard sleeper;

sleeper train

we pretty much slept most of the trip on a hard surface. when we arrived in hohhot, we were surrounded with chinese/mongolians offering us trips to the famed grasslands of mongolia. we ended up going with someone who semi-spoke some english. after some bargaining, we took a small hatchback vehicle (which by the way i hadn't seen since the early 80's) to meet up with the tour group that had already left a few hours before. one the drive, we noticed that the yurts i was excited to sleep in were no longer portable tents, but rather stationary structures that were erected in villages to accommodate to the tourists. sad, i know. there were yurt villages upon yurt villages all over the once barren grasslands. speaking of the grasslands, we thought the grass would be waist to shoulder high and vibrant with an intense green under and crystal blue sky. hmmm... not even close. "yes" the grasslands were enormous... miles and miles of endless rolling hills with far off mountains. "yes" the sky was an unimaginable crystal clear blue. but "no" the grass was not very green and the grass was not very high. in fact, the grass was patchy, barely growing out of the dirt and sprinkled with bits of trash left from the hundreds of tour groups that had passed through since tourism caught on.

regardless, eunice and i were determined to at least get a horseback riding experience. and what an experience it was. first off, my but still hurts from the mongolian saddles we were forced to squeeze into. more so, poor eunice. i think they gave her a kiddie saddle. my wife may be small, but she is no toddler. the horseback riding tour consisted of three hours of walking the horses across the grasslands.

horseback riding

the guide never even let eunice's horse free. i at least got to experience some gallopping (even though it was about 25 yards at a time... all the better, i guess. i can only imagine what type of chaffing that would have caused on the saddles made for miniature men). well, the tour led us to a prayer mount (at which the locals wanted money for us to add another prayer flag) and then through some ghost town where

ghost town

eunice and i were given snacks and a murky tea sort of liquid to drink.

ghost town meal

then it was back to camp. hmmm... money well spent.

even though it wasn't what we expected, the day ended fairly well as we met some chinese couples and even a german guy and his mother. we spent the evening talking over tea, chinese sunflower seeds, grapes and some weird milk candy sort of thing. we talked about places to visit in china, about how chinese parents have to pay 70,000 RMB (a bit over $10,000) for every child after their first born (remember the one-child rule in china?), and just joked and laughed as we tried to communicate in broken english. the food wasn't bad either. except maybe for the horse milk tea.

horse milk tea

overall, the trip actually turned out pretty nice.

next morning we parted from the group to head back for beijing. and wouldn't you know it? no more train tickets available. thank the Lord there were a few seats left on the bus. and now we're back in beijing. one more night here then we're off the Yunnan province in southwest china to do some hiking/trekking in the mountains.

i know i made this short trip seem like a terrible experience, but it really wasn't. we've learned from past trips that traveling is rarely what we anticipate it to be. but that's the joy of traveling. and it forces us to be flexible... and through that we've learned that God provides rich and incredible memories regardless.