GRASSLANDS REVISITED / Somewher north of Hohhot/10.10.

“-You have to go more than 100 km to the northwest to get to the good grasslands. They are really beautiful..”, said our local guide in Hohhot. Hmm… that is in the wrong directio

We were supposed to head south east – towards Beijing. But we decide to follow the advice and check out some good riding grounds. The horses deserved it and so did we. After some arrangements we transport our horses to the Mongol prairie. There is a big mountain range between the city of Hohhot and the vast plains of Inner Mongolia. As usual – this operation takes longer than expected. One never learns. And when we finally arrive it a huge tourist village. Or actually many huge tourist villages with horses that all look more or less bored. No wonder, since all they do is to make a few our trips every day with mostly Chinese tourists that never have even seen a real horse. We started to get a bit worried and pinpointed to our own guide Suyunbay that we have to get a good local riding guide who will take us to some really good horse riding areas. Yes, yes… everybody around us try to convince us that they do understand our needs. We are not convinced. Few hours later – with a lot of taking and taking we are finally on horseback. So is our expedition member “extraordinaire” Urs Jakob. For the second time in his life. He flew in from Canada just to experience the Grasslands for one day! As the tourist village ghetto disappeared from our sight we headed out along a mud road. My worries start to grow…but soon we come to some open space. The air is fresh and clean. Visibility is really good. Yes – it felt nice. Gustaf also seemed to be happy to get out of the dusty suburb of Hohhot. Urs is riding on Emil- our smallest horse. Now Urs is not a small guy and not so light either. So they looked quite funny. A bit like Sancho Pancha. Am I then Don Quixote..? Sometimes it feels like I am fighting windmills here in China. To often actually. :) With the wind in the hair and the four horses trotting in good tempo towards the unknown…eh. Few ours later we reach our camping site – or more accurately our lodge. Two shabby rooms in building with no heating system..Sorry, there is some kind of stove. But it looks like it has been some time since it was last used. The nights here are pretty cold – temperatures go below 0 degrees C. So we better get some fire burning. The guy who owned the place provided us, reluctantly though with some dried goat shit. But to get that to burn is not an easy task. After some negotiations he even more reluctantly offers us some pieces of wood. I ask him about something better to burn. The answer is no. He does not have anything… After two hours frenetic action from our part we have a fire – and a lot of smoke. So there we were in a cold dump filled with smoke. Luckily we had some whisky. Next morning when we got up our “landlord was in full action – trying to get us to leave as soon as possible. We were a bit reluctant since after some hours of determined efforts the temperature in our room was decent and almost without smoke. The sun was shining so we decided to get going as soon as possible. While saddling our horses we saw the owner opening locking the door to his shed when a sudden strong wind struck the door wide open- the shed was full of black coal. The stuff that everybody uses for heating..

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