I’ve wanted to visit Mongolia for a long time now, with a vision of riding horses across the grasslands in my mind. However, I figured that wouldn’t be possible on this trip since we weren’t planning to spend much time in the far northern latitudes and it seemed really hard to get to. Imagine my happiness when we realized that while Mongolia is indeed difficult to visit, the Inner Mongolia region of China is actually relatively accessible from Beijing! It has extensive grasslands, the Gobi Desert [Editor’s note: Technically it’s not called the Gobi Desert, since that’s just in Mongolia. But it’s like an unofficial portion of the Gobi Desert. It’s just a carved out enclave of the desert that’s located in China and goes by a different name.], and yurts galore to stay in. Who knew you could get all that with just a few days detour and a few hours on a train? The typical jumping-off point for tours into the grasslands is the city of Hohhot, which like everywhere else in China has a population of several million, and literally means “Blue Sky” in Mongolian, a reference to the wide open vistas of the grasslands.
We found a hostel that runs popular tours and signed up. The price goes down with more people on the tour, but we were the only ones that signed up for our given day. Fortunately, we learned that a large group was going the day after we had originally planned, so we saved ourselves some money by pushing back our itinerary and spending an extra day in Hohhot (which we just took as a relaxation day rather than push ourselves to visit more temples or museums just for the sake of it). This was also the first time we opted to stay in a true hotel – a large chain-type spot with no personality, but cheaper rooms than the private rooms at the hostels in the area. Not everywhere needs to be quaint.
We were picked up by our driver/guide and the rest of the group (4 exchange students – 3 French and 1 Irishmen – studying in Shanghai, plus 3 Spanish friends) the next morning and drove several hours into the grasslands in our van. We had heard warnings about over-touristy, mass produced “yurt cities,” so we were relieved to get to our little homestead run by a Mongolian family which consisted of only a few amazing yurts to sleep in, one dining yurt, and free-roaming cattle and horses. The romance was slightly tempered when our guide cheerfully gestured to the grassland around us and said “there are no toilets – go somewhere where no one can see you!” and walked away. I looked at the flat, open ground and thought about how far I was going to have to walk to find a forgivingly opaque grass tuft to hide behind, but hey, it’s all mother nature out there and it’s not like the cows were going to care, right? [Editor’s note: They probably cared a bit. There really wasn’t any place to hide out there…]
Our beautiful little yurt for the night
A cow walking through my bathroom, or, me walking through his.
The first afternoon, after lunch of stew and rice in the dining yurt, we tried our hands at archery. With hilariously little instruction or supervision we aimed generally at a target we strung up just outside the fence of the homestead. After several rounds of us all flailing wildly and sending arrows everywhere except the target, a few of us managed to actually hit the thing! I am pretty sure I ended up with the closest to the center, or at least that’s how I remember it. [Editor’s note #1: Jess took a rather lengthy pause from writing this blog entry so that she could pat herself on the back for this. Hold on, she’s still at it. Not done yet… Okay, finally done.] [Editor’s note #2: I’ll just cop to the fact that I didn’t hit the target, despite my best efforts. No shame in that. Archery’s hard. Besides, I’m more of a “blunt force” guy than one who’s proficient at finesse.]
Inside the dining yurt, complete with TV
Rorie aiming at our highly sophisticated target
Archery with our yurt village behind me
Satisfied, we gathered up the scattered arrows again and headed for our next activity: horseback riding. The horses were small and stocky, and were not interested in being friends (our guide warned us as we walked over that they “are not like European horses – they are more like wild animals.”) After we mounted up, the guide noticed that I knew how to hold the reins (American western style, one-handed) and asked me to show everyone else what to do. There wasn’t much steering to be done, however, as our Mongolian guides held our little herd in check as we headed out in a massive loop around the grasslands. [Editor’s note: This was the case for Jess, since her horse was lazy and happy being in the rear. Mine was ornery, didn’t like authority and was obsessed with his relative location in the herd. He liked to aggressively swerve and run, which prompted the Mongolian guide to angrily yell at the horse and lash his whip at him, which might as well have been directly at me.] It was a relaxing and peaceful ride, and I spent most of it admiring the vast, empty horizon around us, a relief after all the big cities. [Editor’s note: Jess is correct in that it was a beautiful ride, which really opened up the vastness and peacefulness of the grasslands for us. With that said, she’s sugarcoating her feelings about it. She was pretty grumpy that she didn’t get take the horse out galloping through the grasslands as her hair flowed in the wind. Fairly understandable, I guess.]
Our Mongolian steeds
Riding off into the sunset
Nothing on the horizon as far as you can see
Once we had finished riding, we were instructed to gather up to collect cattle poop for our fire later. This part definitely counted as a first for all of us, I’m pretty confident. Rorie and one of the Frenchmen donned wicker basket backpacks, and the rest of us shared some rakes and wandered around the grasslands looking for old, dried up cow patties. When we found one, we’d scoop it up with the rake and dump it into one of the backpacks. Cue endless jokes, which did not cease to be funny no matter how many variations there were. “Hang on, let me give you some crap.” “You give me so much shit!” “You have to deal with so much shit from me.” And on and on. [Editor’s note: It was nice to have my literal circumstances in life give me license to openly comment on all the crap that Jess gives me on a daily basis. That alone made it worth carrying a massive wicker basket of poop on my back for an afternoon. Small sacrifice.]
Me giving Rorie a load of crap, as per usual.
After dinner we gathered around the fire pit with some Chinese beer the French students had presciently brought along and tended to our poop fire. It makes total sense as a fuel source, given the complete lack of wood and trees anywhere around, and worked well. Best of all, it smelled a lot less bad than I had expected. The stars were absolutely incredible – I’ve never seen the Milky Way in such sharp relief. [Editor’s note: Totally legit. The stars were phenomenal. You know there are a lot in the sky why you don’t even need to look up to see them – just straight ahead to the horizon.] Completely beautiful, though also freezing cold. Mercifully, they had enormous quilted green coats they let us wear that made us all look like Communist generals. I never wanted to take it off.
Sunset in the rural grasslands
The group around the fire late into the night
Inside our sleeping yurt was an enormous pile of pillows and blankets. In high season up to 6 people share one yurt, but because we were late enough in the year Rorie and I had one to ourselves. This meant that we had enough blankets, pads, and pillows for 6 people, so naturally we used almost all of them and made a huge nest to sleep in, which was pretty fun, if still chilly.
The piles of pillows and blankets inside our yurt
The next morning, after a Mongolian breakfast of milk tea and biscuits, we left our yurt village and headed several hours to the Gobi Desert in our “sand socks” – fabric stockings tied over your shoes and lower pant legs to prevent sand from getting everywhere. Appropriately attired, we were met with a row of saddled Bactrian camels [Editor’s note: They didn’t tell us what type of camels they were. Jess just knew from looking at them. She’s weird like that.] that lurched to their feet as soon as we sat down on them in between the two humps, and headed out into the sand dunes accompanied by two adorable German shepherd puppies that ran alongside the entire way. I loved the camel ride – the swaying gait, the high-up perspective, the thick hair on the hump in front of me that I could bury my hands into, the soft fur on the top of head of the camel behind me, the view of small trees with autumn-yellow leaves giving way to empty sand dunes around us.
Camel riding selfie!
Just us and our herd of camels in the desert
After getting off the camels, we did a little dune sledding, which is exactly what it sounds like. Just like snow sledding, the hardest part is walking up the hill with the sled, and the reward is trying to go as fast as you can back down. After tiring ourselves out doing this (which did not take long) we wandered around the dunes and took in the beautiful windswept desert scenery for a while before mounting our camels again and reversing our course back to the camel pen/parking lot. [Editor’s note: I think Jess is selling all of this slightly short. The desert was unique in that it had tons of yellow trees interspersed in it, which made it pretty visually stunning. The sand was so fine that the gentlest of breezes caused patches of sand to get blown like tiny dust storms across the dunes and up to the top before being blown over the top. Really cool. Also, the sled retrieval process was miserable. Ugh.]
Dune sledding – exactly what it sounds like, only sandier.
The group on top of a sand dune
Contemplating the desert in my sand socks
Tour groups camp in the desert in the summer, but they determined it was too cold (after the night before in the yurt, I was happy to agree with the decision) so we stayed in a small city nearby in a hotel with a marble lobby and a fancy dinner with way too much food. [Editor’s note: It’s not a significant event, per se, but we spent that night drinking beers and playing card games for hours with the French/Irish students. It was a damn good time and nice to just have bantery conversation with them for an evening. It was also our first foray into card games on this trip, sparking our interest and prompting us to learn various card games for 2 people.]
This was for 9 people – way too much amazing food!
The next day we headed to a Buddhist temple with nice grounds where one highlight was the Confucianesque warning signs around the grounds. My favorite part of the temple grounds by far was the hike up to an altar set into the mountain that had once been the site of ancient shamanistic prayer, and is now shared with Buddhist worship in a joint setting. The tiered piles of white rocks against the colorful Buddhist prayer flags were stunning, and I could definitely see how that spot inspires devotion.
Words to live by: Behaved tourism all the way.
“Never destroy a single grass, just because it is insignificant.”
In front of the amazing altar
I cannot get enough of the colorful flags with the white rocks.
Looking back toward the city from the altar
That altar was the final stop in our three-day, two-night tour, and we headed back to Hohhot before our overnight train to Xi’an later that evening. I left feeling completely satisfied and happy with my Inner Mongolia experience – it was relaxing and beautiful, but alien enough to feel challenging at the same time. I also felt rejuvenated from being so far away from cities and other people for a while. Who knew poop fires could feel so peaceful?
