Sunday 29th April

For the last few weeks I have been waking up 15 minutes before my alarm, which I did this morning. Now I am not a morning person and I always feel cheated out of those 15 minutes as there’s not really any point going back to sleep. This morning I was actually excited about our day so I got up and showered straight away. We left the hotel at 7.30am which would give us plenty of time to get a taxi to the hostel that we had found that did English tours. We arrived at the hostel a bit before 8am and had breakfast (bread and jam) now this is the hostel that we were going to stay at because they did tours but they didn’t have double rooms, only dorms and shared bathrooms, which is why we chose the hotel instead. Now when we got to the hostel I am so glad that we did because it was a dive! There was a family of four sleeping in the reception room and there were only two showers in the whole hostel! We paid for our one day tour to the Gobi desert and at 9am we were on the mini bus ready to leave.

We didn’t actually leave until 9.30am which put us behind schedule for the 3.5 hour drive to the desert which was a bit annoying. Anyone that knows me will know that being late (either me or anyone else) is the one thing that really annoys me, add to the fact that I hate travelling for long periods of time and I was already in a bad mood. Luckily I could just put my headphones on and listen to music and I was back to being excited about our day out.

We stopped for lunch at 1pm which was part of the tour fee, I have been on these before and never really liked the food and today was no exception. I couldn’t identify most of the meats and ended up just eating rice and a steamed bread roll. Matt tried the fish and said it tasted like it had lived in dirt and didn’t really enjoy the meal and he is not a fussy eater like me so that’s saying something. 

I thought it was hot at 27 degrees in the city but it was much hotter when we actually got to the desert at about 1.30pm. We stopped at the edge of the desert and went under a cement shelter where we could buy drinks, sand boots (brilliant invention, it was just a material boot to put over your shoes that came up to about your knees to stop the sand getting in your shoes) and also buy hats and face masks (which quite frankly made us look like terrorists).

We then got on an open top sort of truck to take us into the desert which was a lot like being back inside a tank. We drove for about 5 minutes into the desert and there was a shelter and a fenced off area with camels. We were each given a camel to ride and this was the bit that I was most excited about! My camel was very well behaved but the camel behind me kept nuzzling his face against my arm and nearly knocking me off my camel! It was quite sweet until it sneezed all over my arm, at which point I decided we were not friends and whipped out my supply of wet wipes and hand sanitizer (whilst holding onto my camel). Every time we went down a steep sand dune I was hugging my camels hump for dear life as the camel behind me would barge into my camel, almost knocking me off each time, which everyone else from our tour thought was hilarious. I don’t know how long we were on the camels for but I really enjoyed it and was patting my camel the whole way round (in between holding on for dear life). I had heard a lot of stories about how bad tempered camels are and that they spit a lot but I didn’t see any of that, they were extremely good natured, maybe even too much with regards to the camel next to me that kept nuzzling me. They are, however, very gassy animals.

After the camel ride we climbed up a sand dune to do sand sliding which was on a sledge. The sand dune was really steep and I expected to be going really fast but it was actually quite slow which was a bit disappointing. We then had to climb back up the really steep sand dune which was such hard work and as it was so hot and I had barely eaten anything at lunch I felt really light headed and wobbly. When we got to the top we sat in the shade and I drank some water and lemonade and felt a bit better. I then tried quad biking, which I had been looking forward to but it was so hot it was a real effort to have the motivation to do anything by this point. At 4.30pm we got back on the open air truck to take us back to the cement shelter. We stopped at the toilets before we got back on the mini bus and it was literally a room with lots of holes in the floor. No cubicles, you just squat down in front of everyone and the smell was horrendous. I never thought I would say it, but they really spoil you in Beijing with squat cubicles!

We got back on the mini bus and headed back for Hohhot, which with traffic took us 4 hours. By this point it was 8.30pm and we were both really hungry, we got a taxi back to our hotel and ate at the restaurant a few doors down. We ordered duck, lamb, a “Mongolian kebab”, fried rice and vegetables. The duck was half cold, as if they had tried to heat  it up but failed so we left that. The lamb was mutton but was really nice once you had cut off all of the fat, and the Mongolian kebab was nice but we didn’t dare ask what meat it was! After dinner we came back to the hotel for a much needed shower as we were both still covered in sand, then an early night as we have another adventure tomorrow!

See more pics here:http://www.flickr.com/photos/78649657@N03/sets/72157629752539104/