Due to the lack of time in Hohhot, we'd managed to find a Mongolian guy who was offering a private tour to the Grasslands of Inner Mongolia. It was cheap and a good excuse to get out of the smelly and polluted CHinese cities for a day or so, so we met out tour guide at 9am ready for our mini-adventure. There was just one problem, he didn't speak a word of English. Still through a mixture of hand gestures, drawing and pointing at CHinese phrases we'd managed to get what we wanted and after a small argument for no apparent reason with our driver he motioned that we were off. It was a 2 hour dirve to the nearby Xilamuren grassland where, predictably, Chinese home-grown tourists have developed it into a string of yurt encampments - so not quite the Mongolian wilderness experience one would have hoped for. Still I suppose if you want Mongolian you should go to Mongolia.

The beginning to our trip was not great. As we arrived a rather fake and tacky welcome had been organised whereby we were serenaded with Mongolian songs and forced to drink a couple of cups of Mongolian spirit by a couple of brightly dressed Chino-MOngolians. We checked into our yurt, similar in style to those I stayed in in Kyrgyzstan but not quite as isolated or as authentic, and then had lunch. Lunch consited of an array of dishes with vegetable and bits of mutton. Some were pleasant, others were not so. STill we tasted them all, made endless toasts with more Mongolian liqueur and felt quite drunk by the end. As lunch ended, our tour guide offered us a horse ride out in the barren (bar the odd yurt encampment and dirt track road) Mongolian plains. Despite the extortionate expense we took the offer, though with the alcohol still in our systems it might be an interesting ride.

The horses were a bit slow, but it was a pleasant way to spend the afternoon in the sunshine, trying to be awed at the sheer expanse of the grasslands. The whole experience was somewhat soured when we were then charged to go up a bit of track to see what appeared to be a modern temple and another yurt encampment around. We politely refused, though my mood was far from amused. We ambled our way back to the camp to find our guide and driver and try and communicate our disappointment. He replied with a large watermelon that he cut up and we sat around eating the juicy fruit and laughing as we tried to teach eachouther our respective languages.

Later that evening there was some sort of MOngolian sports show which was a half-hearted attempt to turn a wrestling practice and horse race into a show, but it was mildly amusing to watch. More amusing though were the small gathering of CHinese tourists dressed up in Mongolian attire posing for photos. They would have passed for real Mongolians had they not also been wearing their trainers on their feet and their jeans underneath their MOngolian robes!

For supper we were offered a chance to buy a leg of lamb freshly slaughtered that day. We declined, baulking at the extortionate price we'd have to pay for it. Just outside the restaurant was a trailer with a few rather miserable looking sheep, whose number seemed to drop everytime we passed. We thoguht we'd spare them today. Sadly the other guests had decided to go for it, so that was another lamb down with three to go. Again supper was an interesting array of MOngolian dishes with varying taste and quality. More shots were toasted and we got the feeling that out tour guide was after the driver as he wooed her with shot after shot of liqueur. By the end he was trolleyed and was staggering around the yurt shouting into his telephone - we assumed he was buying or selling shares byt the number of such phonecalls he made.

Night had fallen by the time we emerged from supper and had revealed an enormous quantity of stars in the sky. With such little light pollution for miles, everywhere you looked you could see a mass of stars. It was probably one of the most impressive displays I could see, with the Milky Way clearly visible. But just as we were enjoying the night display our guide motioned to us to follow him and we drove to another yurt encampment to find another group of CHinese tourists enjoying a song and dance show - Modern MOngolian style. This truly was tacky, but the real interest was to watch the CHinese tourists wowed with the magic of the display. THey were drunk, tried to chat to us in CHinese despite the fact we told them we didn't understand and they joined in the dancing, some with more success than others. Just as we thought we could creep away our tour guide stands up and dedicates a karaoke song to us. We were centre stage now and all eyes turned to us again - the white foreigners....

It was awfully badly sung. Our driver agreed, nevertheless we whooped with delight at the end not sure if it was to thank him for the song or for finishing! But that was it people motioned to us to join them dancing and we were off doing a mixture of the can-can and the hokey kokey.

The Mongolian disco ended and we headed back to our yurts for more beer until we decided it was time to say goodnight and leave the driver in the capable hand of the tour guide. As Ant said, "What happens in the yurt, stays in the yurt". We didn't ask any further.