From city to desert to mountains, it was now time to make the 250 km journey to the grasslands. I had made friends with the bus driver and so got to ride the rest of the trip in the front seat. This was advantageous for several reasons, mainly the leg room was considerably more than the cramped space previously endured and my new position allowed for a perfect view of the other travellers, who were sleeping in the most interesting positions, sprawled across each other and dangling face down into the aisle. My new Chinese driver buddy and I had a great hand gesture conversation, which was fully compounded when we ran out of oil and no petrol station had the right kind. There we sat, he looking utterly dismayed, in the middle of the grasslands with no oil and a bus full of rambunctious Europeans. I tried to cheer him up with some over enthusiastic thumbs at side of smiling face but he only looked at me from the corners of his eyes as though I were completely mental. I thought that I had achieved another of those blue square shaped victories when he finally began to beam with delight, only to realise that he had somehow, without leaving the van, managed to find someone to mix the oil from scratch, a concept which was only slightly concerning.
We set off again, new driver buddy full of relief produced adrenaline, which had the effect of prompting him to drive like a lunatic. As I was in the front seat, I was the only traveller on board who was able to see quite how close we came to hurtling head long into a lorry. It seems in China, if there’s a traffic jam and you just don’t quite feel like waiting in it, no worries, it’s totally fine to drive off road for a few metres and then zoom down the lane of oncoming traffic. The sound of the horn, in all situations, is the theme tune to Chinese life.
We arrived at the grasslands in the early evening. It was quite an incredible juxtaposition of landscape-in twenty four hours we had gone from the desert to the mountains and now we were standing in a huge expanse of flat, grass covered land (I know that sounds obvious, but it’s the best way to describe the surroundings). All that we could see around us were the five yurts (large, circular tents with a raised wooden platform on which you sleep) in which we would spend the night, a larger yurt for dining, the Mongolian family farm house and an outhouse. There were also several cows and horses and very large piles of cow dung from which to make a fire. The yurts were arranged in a line so that behind and on both sides, all that could be seen was undisturbed land, on the end of which the sun was now settling and the sky had become transfixed with vibrant pinks and oranges.
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| The yurts |
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| The yurts |
We had a traditional Mongolian meal of rice, noodles AND potatoes with a large hunk of lamb meat and some pickled delicacies. We were also served milk tea which had been mixed with a considerable quantity of salt, this seemed to be a normal addition to a Mongolian beverage but was none the less, slightly distasteful. After dinner we sat around with the other travellers, of which there were French, Germans, Spanish, English, Dutch and American, all of whom lived in some part of China and were escaping the big cities for National day golden week. The temperature very quickly dropped to around -5 and our tiny dung-heap fire faded fast, this meant that our only possible option for prolonged warmth was to play drinking games with various Chinese alcohols, bijou being the most prominently disgusting. Thoroughly sauced, and slightly warmed, we went outside to look at the stars. The sky was utterly stunning, tiny stars, usually kept hidden, sparkled next to every constellation that we could recall. We tried to name ten but could only remember a few, all of us recognising the Milky Way with the excitement of people used to living inside a concrete, star-banished metropolis.
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| The boys and the rest of the travellers eating a mongolian meal |
The boys and I were sharing our yurt with two American girls, Mellissa and Becca, with whom we had become friendly. That night we got even closer. It was so cold that we all slept with our shoes and coats on and had to huddle together for warmth that, in my experience, never came. The night before we left our apartment, the boys were joking with me about how cold I’d be with no sleeping bag in the grasslands, bragging about what well prepared adventurers they were for having thought ahead and owning camping equipment. The irony was not lost on me, as we lay on cold wood with a mere blanket covering us: not only had the boys both forgotten their sleeping bags, but they also hadn’t brought any warm clothes, in fact, David was at this moment donning my frilly scarf and I could feel Thomas shivering away next to me. This warmed my spirit if not my toes.
After a sleepless night, we arose to watch the sun rise and drink more salted tea. Me: That was an interesting experience but I am NEVER doing that again. Becca: I still can’t feel my toes. David: I slept quite well, actually. Me: I know, I could hear you snoring all night, you….
Our road trip adventure was concluded by another ‘never again.’ We were taken to what appeared to be a Mongolian ghost town: half farm, half tiny village with abandoned, tiny stone and cement houses in long rows and several disgruntled animals scattered about randomly. A horse ride across the plains was included in the price of our tour and so, although none of us really trusted the safety of this option, we didn’t want to miss out on something that we had effectively already paid for. The horses were tiny; in fact, watching the boys wobbling around on top of these under developed beasts was comical in the extreme, especially since we had a boy in our group who was just less than 7ft. The saddles were held on by little more than a thick piece of string and the reigns were way too short. What wasn’t comical was the complete lack of control that any of us had over the horses. The best example of this was when we came to a main road. My horse was at the front of the others and as we approached the road I pulled the reigns to make it stop. This instead prompted the horse to stride purposefully out onto the road, when there was a bus heading straight towards us. In England, if a driver sees a horse on the road, they will slow down, turn the music off and generally be patient with an animal of considerable weight and power. The buses reaction to having fourteen people-baring horses appear in front of it was to speed up, hand on horn: another near fatality and yet another story to tell. After we had cantered precariously back to the farm/village/?, we climbed back into the bus and made our jolly way back to Hohhot. This time I used my new Chinese bus driver buddy to practise my Chinese. Badly.
Back in Hohhot and checked in to a considerably more comfortable hotel, we decided to meet Becca and Mellissa and head out to some bars. All: We won’t drink much tonight, just a few beers and then bed. I’m really tired. Four bottles of vodka and two Chinese night clubs later, we were all wandering aimlessly around Baby box, gambai-ing every suitable looking person we could find (which essentially came down to any Chinese person who had a drink in their hand). Chinese clubs are always an experience. Massively over the top in their décor and pumping a strange combination of cheesy-classics and heavy bass, they make for a really fun night out; especially as we’re usually the only foreigners in there and so for one night, we gain celebrity status. Baby box, however, had its own guest celebrity-enter Chinese lady Gaga followed by a whole crew of photographers and body guards. She walked straight past us, this random Chinese lady dressed as lady gaga, got onto the stage, performed two songs, badly, got down and made her way back through the throng of over excited fans. The whole time, her body guards (there were four of them flanking her on all sides) kept stony expressions behind their dark sunglasses. Oh China!!
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