Trip to Ningxia Pt 1 - Beijing to Yinchuan

Photos

China's National Day (Monday October 1) is celebrated by a 3 day public holiday but a lot of workplaces take the whole week off. Happily, mine is one of those places and I had 10 days to explore China. My friend Charlotte was organising a trip to Ningxia, a small province to the West of Beijing and invited anyone to join, so I decided to get out of Beijing and go camel trekking in the desert!

Wasting no time, on the Friday night I took the train to Baotou (Inner Mongolia) by myself as there were complications with the tickets, but the girls were close behind on a train a few hours behind. Having never taken a train in China, say nothing of by myself, I did wonder how I was going to go but I chose to be the one going solo as it was a good practice run for me when I need to go home by myself at the end of the trip. The train was ok, I managed to get on the right one on time, and it wasn't too terrible at all, and even had nice little touches like fake flowers in the toilet. Getting to Baotou at 7am, I had nothing to do but wait so I ate breakfast in a little noodle place, and made one bowl of noodles last a whole hour. I was getting a bit of attention, partly because I was lugging my enormous backpack around but mostly because they don't get a lot of foreigners in those parts. A man who came to get tissues from my table asked me where I was from while blowing his nose, and after telling him I heard "Ao da lia" (Australia) being shouted around the place like a hot potato. I wasn't in Beijing any more.

People were not at all threatening or rude, just simply bluntly curious. After breakfast I went for a walk and when I rested in a park, I was swooped on being lovely old women who keep saying "Shao mao yi" (which I didn't understand until one lady showed me she was wearing three layers versus my t-shirt, and literally means "too few jumpers") to finding out if I was married and then trying to marry me off. The other girls arrived soon after, we found a hotel, and we went off to see the Wudang Lamasery outside Baotou. We took a bus to the nearest village, underwent a very similar experience to my breakfast with "Ao da lia" ringing from the rooftops, and hired a taxi to take us the last few kilometres to the lamasery. DJ Speed Racer I've dubbed him, as he diced death by crazy overtaking and driving on the wrong side of the road to the electronic remix of "My Heart Will Go On".

The Wudang Lamasery was awesome though, complete with monks on mobiles. There was the awesome moment too, when a monk came out of one of the temples, strutted to a motorbike, flung his cape over his shoulder and zoomed off all James Dean-like! We were dumb struck and sooo impressed! "Mastadon-sized ribs" called us for dinner (thank you Lonely Planet) which were actually pretty damn tasty, and I bought us each a cool army style hats for our camel trekking adventure. As we had to be up at stupid o'clock, Pip and I tried to sleep early but when it got dark we realised that the red neon sign for the hotel was just outside our window. What I don't have a photo of is the fact that my sleeping bag turned me blue. "The Smurf-maker" I've christened it and yes, every exposed piece of skin was rubbed blue from the lining of the bag. Not happy Jan.

05:45 bus to the border town of Alashan Zuoqi (still Inner Mongolia), arrived after a loooong bus journey at 3pm to find it cold and raining in the driest province in China. We visited another really beautiful temple, went to look at the "Precious Rocks Market" next to it, and we had to have Mongolian Hot Pot just to warm up! The next day We hired a driver, Mr Wang, who drove us to Yinchuan (the capital of Ningxia) via two local attractions, the Twin Pagodas and Ancient Rock Carvings.




But right on the border of Inner Mongolia and Ningxia was an old section of the Great Wall which was particularly exciting for me as it is the first time I've ever seen the Great Wall. They actually have bits of the Great Wall lying about the place but this one was so cool cause it wasn't reconstructed. On a very tight schedule, it was speed tourism and we ran to the Wall, took a zillion shots and ran back to the car, laughing the whole way.


The Twin Pagodas were beautiful, though I got suckered into giving them money after I took part in a prayer (fool that I am) and the rock carvings were amazing. I was so impressed by just the gorge that they were in, it was one of the most magnificent things I've seen in China and again we took a zillion photos of, yes, rocks. The carvings were strangely beautiful, drawn by nomadic tribes that used to live in the mountains. Some of them were a bit queer though, with drawings of what looks like a mobile phone, animals copulating, aliens, and even "human faces with facial organs representing the images of warriors which are outcomes of the ancient's worship toward their genital organs". True story.

Continued in Part 2...