Backdated 10/5 - Next stop on this tour was in Inner Mongolia where I met up with Landon, my recording/adventure eating/80分/mountain biking buddy from Nanjing. After another one of those 24 hours trains, I ended up in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia ready for adventure. (Note: I do NOT recommend training it during one of the two week-long national holidays in China. With 1.3 billion people on vacation, it makes it impossible to buy a sleeper ticket. And I can tell you that 24 hours in a hard seat with 1.3billion crowded around does not make for good international relations. Also, with 73% of them males [courtesty of the uno child policy], and 100% of them being smokers, second-hand smoke has a completely new meaning.)
Our tentative plan was to rent motorcycles and dominate the grasslands, stopping at nights with lonely Mongolian herdsmen and dismounting our motorcycles only to mount up on some wild ponies we corraled up. Everyone we told about our vacation plans simply laughed at its inconceivability, but we were not so easily persuaded.
After meeting Landon at the airport (he is rich and so travels accordingly), we headed back into the city in search of our "iron horses". In Hohhot, guys drive around all day on motorcycle taxis, sporting their construction helmets for safety and honking their horns indefinitely to the same effect. We came across two and after an hour of deliberation over cost and deposit, finally came to an agreement. And the bikes were ours! Well, not until after shelling out 2000rmb (300US) for payment and deposit. The street corner probably wasn't the best place to do so as we drew quite a crowd...the more people stopped to watch, the more people stopped to watch and before we knew it there were at least 30 people encircling us watching what must have seemed a sketchy transaction to them, as these Chinese handed over their livelihoods to two backpack-laden foreigners dishing out the big red bills.
But so much for the people who said it couldn't be done!
What transpired the following week was a beautiful thing of man, machine, and Mongolia, camping our way through the countryside of grasslands, mountains, lakes, and even a Gobi desert thrown in there for good measure.
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4 comments:
You are crazy! Totally Crazy! In a good way of course. Have fun, be safe..... live Jesus.
-Karen
You really show what a western cowboy are made of:)
I took the plane and paid cash. You took the train and paid a lung. Who got the better deal?
That last one was from Landon, by the way, not my wife
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