Tuesday 1st May

Last night was the worst nights sleep ever. The dog from the farm (which was tied up behind our three yurts) howled ALL night and kept waking me us all up. Luckily it wasn’t cold like I was expecting and actually quite comfy but I was really tired when I was woken up by the sunlight at 5am. This was also frustrating as we were told we would be woken up to watch the sunrise which hadn’t happened. The grasslands were beautiful in the morning sun and it actually felt quite warm. At 8am breakfast was ready, which was a steamed bread that looked like a thick pancake, a milky tea which you were supposed to dip your bread into and then a bowl of round seeds. I just ate the bread as I am not a fan of tea and everyone agreed that breakfast was disappointing and the best meal by far had been yesterdays lunch. At 9am we piled back onto the minibus to take us back on the 2.5 hour drive to Hohhot, which everyone kept saying how much we wanted a shower. We got back to our hotel at 12pm and did just that and packed up our things to check out at 2pm.

At 2pm we had booked a driver to pick us up and take us to the Watu pagoda, the Bai Ta pagoda and then to the airport for our flight back to Beijing. We went to the Watu pagoda first which was surrounded by temples and behind that there was the Indian influenced five tier pagoda.  It was quite nice walking around as there were barely any people there and it was a really pretty pagoda, not like the usual styles that I have seen in China.

 After the Watu pagoda we went to Qingcheng park which was absolutely packed full of people so we didn’t stay long. We jumped back in the mini bus and went to the Bai Ta Pagoda which was near the airport. The Bai ta pagoda is a traditional style with seven tiers and looked absolutely huge! When you entered it was really dark and creepy and a really steep climb to the next tier. It felt a lot like an old castle prison tower as there were lots of bars on the windows and the main room on the seventh tier of the tower had prison like doors and windows. The doorways were really small and you had to crouch down to get in them but the view from the top was really good. After the pagoda we went to the airport where we had something to eat and checked in for our flight, which was bang on time.