Inner Mongolia: Horses, Sun Burns and Campfires

This has been the most amazing trip I have been on yet! Inner Mongolia is…indescribable…but I’ll try my best.

I stayed up all night on Friday because our power meter had run out (so we didn’t have any electricity) and so the AC didn’t work. Around 5:30am, I drove to the meeting point where the minibus was going to pick us all up. On my way there, I asked myself ‘What are you doing?!?…..Are you crazy – you’re going to Inner Mongolia?!?’ And then it hit me – when else am I going to have the opportunity to take such an adventure!!!

As I arrived at the pick-up spot, I was introduced by one AIESEC alumni from India (now living in Beijing) to 10 people from France, 1 girl from Korea and 2 guys from India. So there were going to be 14 of us in total on the trip! We all packed into the little minibus and took off. We all dozed on and off the whole way there to catch up on our sleep, but some sights on the way out there included: Approximately 700 construction workers, countless mountains covered with lush green plants, numerous farmers fields growing everything from rice to watermelon and so much more.

We finally arrived at the gates to the town and were greeted by about 20 smiling locals (one of which was our host, so she jumped onto the bus and directed us out to her place). Of course, the whole way out we bargained down the price and got it to 10 quay for the night (yes - $1.50!!!) We finally pulled up to a modest little house in a village of about 10 houses. There was a bathroom, a kitchen (where our hosts cooked our meals) and 6 bedrooms. There was also a henhouse where they kept all the chickens, a pen for some sheep and huge piles of hay everywhere!

Immediately after getting unpacked, we had lunch and bargained for a price to ride horses for 75 quay for the entire day. Then all of the locals from the other houses seemed to rush over as fast as they could with their horse – so this resulted in everyone yelling at us to choose their horse to ride. I got extremely lucky! I ended up with probably the best horse in the group – as it was obedient…and fast J We rode through open fields and over rolling hills, visited villages and rode through streams – it was amazing! The end result after 4 hours of riding was an incredible experience, but a REALLY sorry butt!

After we returned to our place, we decided that we would buy a lamb and have a huge feast! We purchased an entire lamb for 400 quay ($65 Canadian) and they ended up doing the whole process of killing, skinning and gutting the lamb right in front of us, then putting it on the BBQ – directly onto our plates. It was definitely something that at first made my stomach a little queasy, (you can see the pictures of the whole process on my pictures website, but I warn you that they are VERY VERY gross – Vegetarians DO NOT ENTER), but the lamb was delicious! We also had noodle dishes, pork and peppers, green onion cakes, slivered potatoes, egg pancakes and sugared tomatoes. Then our hosts cleaned up all of the dishes, pulled out two gigantic speakers, started pumping some crazy old-school English techno music and brought out the beers! They set up a huge fire for us right in front of the house and we all started playing drinking games (Whiz – Bing – Bong!!!) around the fire. Next thing we knew, fireworks were exploding in the sky over the hills and the music pumped on…

5am the next morning….”Cooooooock-a-doodle-do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”…..(you should have seen the look on my face!) Waking up at 5am definitely what I was planning, but I rolled around until 6am, then got myself up for a morning hike. I climbed by myself up a nearby hill and had an amazing view of the entire village (and nearby villages).

After returning to our place, most of us decided to go on a big hike, so we took a 4 hour journey up into the hills – through villages – passing local farmers, pigs and horses….and SNAKES! Yes, that’s right, we even came across a couple snakes on our climb.

We returned back to our place, had one last great meal and then departed for Beijing. On the way back, we came up to a roadblock…we were about the third vehicle in line. There was a crane and ambulance blocking the road in both directions. We all got out to see what was going on and realized that someone had driven off of the road (mountain on one side – 20 foot drop on the other side). The crane pulled a jeep out of the ditch. It’s top was completely crushed. The crane laid the crumpled vehicle down on the street and immediately the paramedics pulled a dead body out of the vehicle, bagged it and took off for the nearest town. I stood there feeling completely numb…I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. By this time there were about 40 people looking on. At this time, locals and tourists forgot about the places they had to go or getting out their camera to take pictures…everyone just stood there looking on – praying for the families of the victim and looking on in complete shock. This put a bit of a sour note on the end of the trip, but the trip itself was still an incredible experience and I loved every moment of staying with our hosts, horseback riding through fields and partying around a campfire.

Inner Mongolia and the people I went with will definitely stay with me wherever I go.