We arrived in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, lunchtime on Wednesday and our first thoughts were "oh dear what are we doing here!!" We have definately had it easy in China up to this point! There were no other Westerners or English speakers around and I think we are a rarity by the 4 deep crowd that surrounded us whilst we were trying to get a taxi to take us to a hostel! Our first choice hostel which according to the Lonely Planet was opposite the train station, that no longer existed and then the second hostel that we got the taxi to take us to, had the wrong address listed in the Lonely Planet - argh! Luckily we had found a lovely taxi driver who turned off the meter whilst we were lost, actually stopped for directions, finally found the hostel and then refused to accept a tip!

The hostel was more like a hotel, we eventually managed to communicate that we wanted a cheap room and the 4 bed dorm that we had to ourselves was pretty plush. They also booked us on the Grasslands Tour for the next day, helped us sort our train tickets to Beijing and even let us use a mobile to ring the hostel in Beijing we want to stay in, some people are so nice!

We had a yummy and cheap dinner in a local restaurant of dumplings and then stopped at a little local store to stock up on drinks and snacks. Something that we have recently noticed, if you shop at the little local stores rather than the big supermarkets, pretty much everything in them is out of date by a good few months, food and drink alike! Well we have been drinking out of date water and soft drinks for at least a week now and we are ok so it can't be that bad, although we discovered here that out of date beer is definately not good!

We headed out on the Grasslands Tour Friday morning, we were the only ones on the tour with our guide Kathy! We drove the 2 hours to the Xilamuren Grasslands through stunning scenery and lots of little villages all full of yurts!

As we arrived at the Yurt camp we were to be staying at we were greeted by people all in traditional Mongolian dress who gave us a welcoming ceremony which involved them singing traditional songs to us whilst presenting us with a large shot of Baijiu (White Spirit), with which we had to dip our third finger in it and flick some to the sky, some to the earth and rub some on our forehead, before downing the rest of the shot!! This we had to do several times and after about the 5th shot I was feeling pretty queasy!

The Grasslands were completely remote, barren and exposed with literally nothing but the odd Yurt camp for miles and miles. To look at we easilycould have been on top of the Brecon Beacons or the Black Mountains, just bigger! It is currently the windy season and it was very very windy, which made it extremely cold, despite the dazzling sun and brilliant blue sky! We had to put on pretty much all our clothes to keep warm!

We went horseriding for a couple of hours across the Grasslands which was amazing. Andrew was a bit nervous but he had a lovely calm little horse and in no time at all he was happily trotting along. Mine was a moody thing and didn't like many of the other horses so I was constantly having to avoid them! We rode to a Herdsman's Cottage where we drank milky tea which was quite tangy and ate homemade cheese which was rock hard with quite a bizarre taste! At one point we were in the middle of a full on dust storm, which was quite unnerving, luckily the horses instinctively knew what to do and took over, all turning around so our backs were to the dust storm! Back at the Yurt camp in the afternoon we got to see some traditional Mongolian racing, those horses move fast and some traditional Mongolian Wrestling!

Dinner, like lunch, started off with us having to drink more shots of the Baijiu! There was loads of food, it was a bit embarrassing as Andrew and I were given as much food between us as the large groups of 10/12 Chinese people who were also staying at the Yurt camp! There was no way we could eat it all, although Andrew gave it a good shot! There were many different dishes but everything, veggies and potatoes included, somehow tasted like lamb or goat, or like Andrew said definate hints of donor kebab meat!! The joints of roast lamb were delicious though as the meat literally melted in our mouths!

After dinner there was a traditional Mongolian song and dance performance, which was very good, several different singers, dancers and even a guy playing the traditional matouqin (Horsehead fiddle), which is a two stringed instrument played with a bow! I even got involved towards the end with the dancing, it was a fun evening.

Staying in the Yurt, was what Andrew was looking forward to. A Yurt is kind of like a large, round, sturdy tent, some of them even have fires in the middle. We went to sleep wrapped up in about 6 duvets, it was the coldest we have experienced for a long time!

Up early today to return to Hohhot, the sun was already high in the sky at 6.30am! Another huge breakfast was waiting for us, but neither of us could face eating lamb stew at that time in the morning, which was a real shame!

Next and final stop Beijing!

Lots of Love, Sarah and Andrew xxx