By nine o'clock in the morning, the seven of us were packed into a coach with a load of other tourists from all over the world, racing out of Hohhot deep into the Inner Mongolian Grasslands. I managed to sleep for the first few hours of the journey; when I woke up, we were already far outside the city, twisting and turning along empty hillsides, through poor villages where practically every wall seemed to be plastered in what looked like Cultural Revolution slogans.

Throughout the journey, I was constantly woken up by the sound of someone desperately trying to hold back their laughter and became increasingly frustrated, wondering what could possibly be so funny after sitting in a stuffy coach for so long. The sound then turned out to be the breaks of the coach, which every time they were pressed made a sound exactly like someone holding back their laughter.

But there was more reason for annoyance: one of the French tourists sitting next to Clio woke up to see an absolutely terrifying-looking giant hornet perched on the window next to him, which was especially worrying, given certain incidents in China recently.http://www.sickchirpse.com/asian-giant-hornet/

Laughing nervously, he picked up his flip-flop, preparing to crush it. The atmosphere in the coach quickly became very tense as we realised that if he failed to kill the beast in one swipe, an angry giant hornet would be unleashed upon all of us. One loud thump later, its remains were relievingly splattered all over the window and the French tourist's shoe. We all happily went back to sleep.

After a while, we started seeing compunds, filled with rows of yurts all over the landscape around us. I later found out these were holiday resorts for Chinese tourists, which even featured karaoke yurts.

Fortunately, we weren't in one of these. The coach eventually pulled off the main road and drove across the grass, until I could not help but remember a line from the Chinese classic Six Records of a Floating Life,which we studied last year. "四望無村落", meaning, 'In all four directions there was not a single settlement.' All we could see was grass.

Luckily, a settlement of yurts soon appeared, dotted on the horizon, looking rather more authentic than the Chinese holiday resorts. We all scrambled out the laughing bus and claimed a yurt that just fit us seven. Inside were piles of duvets and - surprisingly - electricity. Another surprise was still having full signal on my phone, despite the fact we were in the middle of nowhere.

After about half an hour, it gradually dawned on Coirle and me that Inner Mongolia was remarkably similar to Connemara in Ireland. The vast stretches of treeless plains; horses galloping across the horizon, barely any people and potatos for every meal. In fact, in certain photos, you wouldn't even be able to tell whether they were taken in Ireland or in China. Obviously the sight of yurts instead of thatched cottages destroyed the illusion.

We went for a walk across the empty plains and came across a small hill with an erie, altar-like pile of stones on the top, freaking out Coirle and Clio. One of the hostel guides later explained to us this was a Shamanistic altar - Shamanism used to be the most popular religion in Mongolia, until the Chinese introduced Buddhism during the Qing Dynasty, which is now the religion of over 50% of Mongolians. As the altar proved, Shamanism continues to be practised today.

After we returned from our walk, the guides had set up archery practise for us, and we were freely able to play around with bows and arrows. I failed to hit the target even once and gave up, frustrated (especially since I'd got a bullseye in Nanjing last year, and Freddie ended up having to buy me a drink). Lucy had more luck hitting the target, but managed to bruise her arm dramatically with the bowstring. She later claimed the bruise was inflicted on her by Charly.

After archery, Freddie and I went horse riding with some of the other tourists. When riding in Ireland, I was always told that horses should travel in single file, otherwise they would try and race one another. Our seven horses were in no recognisable formation - our guide rode behind us, whilstling at the horses and occasionally whipping them. When one of them farted, the others would all gallop off in different directions and our guide would have to ride after each of them to bring them back under control.

Since Buddhism is a widely-practised religion in Mongolia, Buddhist symbols had been shaven into each of the horses' fur. Unfortunately, most Westerners would not directly associate this particular Chinese character with Buddhism: '卍'

When one of the two French girls riding with us saw this character, she said "Eh, regarde! C'est un symbole raciste, n'est-ce pas?", probably imagining that this horse rearer living in the Mongolian Steppe was in fact a staunch supporter of National-Socialism, who expressed his views by shaving swastikas on the arses of horses. But no, it was probably more likely that he was a Buddhist, like most Mongolians. Surprisingly though, Neo-Nazism does exist in Mongolia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazism#Mongolia

After about an hour of riding, Freddie and I went back to our yurt and were relaxing, when one of the guides stuck her head through our door. She asked us, in the politest way possible, "Excuse me, would you like to pick up some... poo?" Unsurprisingly. we were confused by the question, but she had asked it in such a way that we couldn't refuse. Equally politely, we replied, "Yes, I suppose we could," to which she then responded, "You don't have too if you're too tired." We ended up insisting that we should 'pick up poo' together.

And that was exactly what we went on to do. Not without reason of course - turns out that, in the absence trees, they burn cow pats on camp fires. They need to be dry, meaning the task of 'picking up poo' was not as disgusting as it sounded. Of course, this activity provided a whole world of opportunity to Freddie, a great lover of puns ("Get your s*** together" etc).

We then had dinner, sitting cross-legged under a wall hanging of Genghis Kan (who is obviously a very big deal to Mongolians). The food we were given was extremely starchy: mainly potatos and rice, with some meat and veg on the side. We drank more of the surprisingly savoury Mongolian milk, which tasted mildly better than yesterday's.

Some German tourists happened to be eating with us: one of them showed Freddie how to open a beer bottle without a bottle opener. We were all amazed and tried to copy his method, without success. The Germans found this very amusing and started talking about it amongst themselves, unaware I was able to understand, "It's so weird - I've never seen anyone who didn't know that trick." "Well, that's the English for you. They drink so little." This was obviously an incorrect statement and I had to hold myself back from telling him. Retrospectively, I wish I had.

It then became very cold when the sun went down. So cold, in fact, that we all had to bring our duvets when we walked around outside. Lucy managed to terrify Coirle and Clio by standing in the darkness with a black sleeping bag over her head.

As the temperature got even lower, we went back into our yurt, hiding under layers of blankets. I, of course, had a dream about the giant hornet on the coach.