After a much-better-than-expected breakfast (the hotel cost us less than £20), we asked the lovely girls at the hotel reception about travel to Beijing and they couldn’t understand us. A helpful man man used the translation facility on his phone to explain that the train went to Khokhot, the capital of the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, where we would have to change for the Beijing train. Better to go by bus which left from the hotel at 3pm. The receptionists said we could stay in our room to 13.30, but must be in the foyer by 14.30 for the shuttle car to the bus station which was only 400 metres away. The sleeper bus was a double-decker and we went upstairs to the back where we could recline (almost) as if in a bed. We expected a great throng of Chinese to come on-board, but no-one did, even during a short stop at Khokhot. We were alone all the way to Beijing, where the bus stopped in a deserted bus station at 01.00. We didn’t get out because we weren’t even sure that we were in Beijing. We then suffered 4 hours of torment; the bus got very hot because it wasn’t moving and at least one mosquito bit Jennifer umpteen times (although not me!). Eventually the driver came at 05.00 to tell us we had arrived at Mutien bus station so we got out and stopped a taxi. The driver couldn’t understand my pronunciation of “Novotel hotel” so he took us to Qotian metro station on the Blue (No.8) line (at Tiananmen Square) which was one stop from the Wangfujing station, serving the famous shopping street with all the Western big-brand stores. Eventually we got to the hotel and got a “superior” room as opposed to the “standard” room last October.
The landscape had changed from flat semi-desert (southern edge of the Gobi Desert) south of Erenhot to rolling hills of green grassland with frequent flocks of sheep and herds of cattle and horses. We couldn’t see much after after darkness fell at 20.30, but the frequent lights suggested that the bus was travelling through a heavily industrialised area. There was one particularly large industrial town with several coal-fired power stations churning out vast clouds of smoke from enormous chimneys.
The lovely staff at the hotel in Erenhot
The hotel lobby
Inner Mongolia is famous for dinosaur skeletons. So someone has erected dinosaur models along the motorway.
Inner Mongolia landscape