内蒙古: Trekking

After an eventful and incredible week on the steppes of Inner Mongolia, I've finally made it back to Beijing to write about my adventures. Now, when I say "write," I'm technically referring to the 800 character report that I'm supposed to compose about my investigation into the Mongolian culture, as it's due Monday morning, but what's the fun in starting early on an assignment? So first, I will catalogue my adventures as I recorded them in my little notebook.

Part laziness and part time shortage keep me from writing as thoroughly as I'd like, so all I'm really going to do is transcribe my observations from my book to my blog, punctuated by a few (very illustrative) pictures. I'll also be adding in my final thoughts in italics from time to time.

Friday, 6:50 PM, on the bus

Chinese highways aren't big into roadside towns or fast food outlets. Instead, there is the occasional joint gas station-convenience store-bathroom that pops up with much less frequency than in the US. It was at one of these stops that our group first experienced the startled glances and unabashed staring that would follow us through the rest of the week. I guess a bus-load of Westerners speaking Chinese is unusual in Inner Mongolia.  I fell asleep for about "half the trip" (or so I thought) when we were still in foggy and mountainous terrain.

But when I woke up, there was a brief second when I thought I was back in Nebraska. There was SO MUCH CORN. I could have been on I-80. It made me wonder about how the Chinese approach de-tasseling...

But it wasn't just the corn. The sky was so big, the hills were gently rolling, and I could watch the sunset turn everything a soft pink, instead of the harsh red that shines through the polluted haze of Beijing. 

I was fairly content until, 90 kilometers out from Huhhot, our destination, we hit a traffic jam. This wasn't just your average rush hour traffic jam. This was an overwhelming, 90-kilometer-long traffic jam lasting all the way to the city itself. Apparently it was a pretty common occurrence when trying to drive into Huhhot, because all the semis around us, and our bus, turned off their engines in preparation to wait it out. We Americans had no idea what was going on. A traffic jam? On a rural interstate?

We started to get antsy so after seeing the driver get off the bus, we followed suit. The drivers of the other semis got quite the surprise when they saw us Americans all unload from the bus chattering away in Chinese.

We kept ourselves entertained by translating some of our favorite songs into Chinese, ranging from Lady Gaga's "Telephone," and "Poker Face," to Spice Girls' "Wannabe" and MC Hammer's "Can't Touch This." Suffice it to say, we met with mixed results.

And then, we looked up.

If seeing the unending fields of corn gave my heart a pang of homesickness, then looking up was like a sledgehammer to the chest. The stars were stunning, and every bit as bright as I was used to seeing when looking up from the deck of my house. I would be getting an even better view later, when we were away from even the little bit of light pollution from the cars. Now, we're back in the bus, still waiting for this traffic jam to let up. We've been playing a lot of Egyptian Rat Screw.

Saturday, 12 PM, on the bus


The bus finally started moving around 11:00 PM, two hours after we had first hit the traffic jam. We were all pretty excited. I went ahead and let myself go to sleep, excited to be reaching a bed soon. What I saw when I woke up, however, was the complete opposite of what I expected. The bus had stopped on the edge of a highway, and the engine and lights were off. I didn't know what time it was, but I saw that everyone was asleep. I spent the next few hours trying to sleep comfortably in a hard, upright bus seat, but it was impossible. For my troubles, I ended up with various sore spots and a painful headache.

Finally, FINALLY, at 4:30 AM I awoke to see our hotel before us. I didn't even have the energy to be happy, which ended up proving fortuitous since my mood didn't have too far to fall when we were told that the hotel was under blackout. Translation: no electricity, no running water, and no elevator to take our luggage to our 12th floor rooms. I ended up leaving my luggage behind the front desk with the plan to retrieve it when morning (and electricity) came.

So when we finally made it up to our floor, we were set just to fall into bed. Alas, it wasn't to be. Our room key didn't work, and I, for one, was so past my limit of physical endurance that I couldn't even think about descending 12 flights, struggling to communicate my problem in Chinese, then re-ascending 12 flights, so I just called it a night and laid down in the (well-carpeted) hallway to sleep. Luckily, our teachers/supervisors are the most tenacious guardians I've ever seen. They used their cells to call the front desk and made the receptionist come up and fix the problem. Ten minutes later, I was asleep in what felt like the most comfortable bed in the world.

This morning our teachers changed the schedule so we could sleep in until 10:30 AM, instead of the 7:30 AM departure originally on the itinerary. Now we're on our way to the next destination, and as we travel the rural highway through the region, I can't help but wonder what in the world is going on?! Random development, empty towns... it's like Inner Mongolia (apart from big cities) is a ghost region. Whatever city we're in right now has so many stores, but no one is out on the streets or shopping in the stores.

On a separate note, the Mongolian written language is really, really strange (the vertical squiggly lines above the Chinese characters). I wonder what it sounds like. Guess I'll find out when we get to wherever we're going.