After a nice vegan lunch we drove back to the hotel and had the opportunity to see something of this beautiful country along the roadside, like these not so beautiful trails of industrial smoke. I hope they will soon install dust collectors and stop polluting their country :(
A pebble hanzi (Chinese character) meaning water:
Two staples, maize (left) and sorghum (right). They are not only used for food and fodder, but also for biofuel.
Horses are still an important factor in Mongolian life. Less so in the city, but in the surrounding steppe grass land, as it is manifested in this piece of art.
To our surprise it started to rain heavily when we reached the city again. After all this desert experience this was kind of unreal.
After a day out and about, dinner in our hotel was very welcome. We used the buffet restaurant at the Xin Cafe and I was really surprised about the many vegetarian options they had. And I thought Mongolian food means mutton, mutton, and more mutton.
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| http://www.shangri-la.com/en/property/huhhot/shangrila/dining/restaurant/xincafe |
After dinner we wanted to explore the little park we could see from our hotel window:
By now it was dark, but that didn't really matter. The last stalls in the park were closing and there were only few people left, some love couples, some late anglers, and us.
The Shangri-la building with its beautiful reflection on the lake.
This is the little pagoda in the middle of the lake you can see on the upper photo:
A warrior at night:
When we came back we redeemed our gift coupon for a cocktail at the lobby lounge bar; superb! C had a mocktail called 'Mongolia Blush' with sea-buckthorn berries (the red one on the left) and mine was called 'Green Knot' with local bamboo liqueur and a green plum. Together with the vegetable crisps a perfect ending for our long first day.
The horse sculpture is magnificent. I'm catching up with your blog, you seem to be having a 'whale of a time in Mongolia'. It is a place I have to admit I know very little about, so its good for me to read about your travels.
ReplyDeleteI have to say those mocktails have got me curious - not that i am much of a cocktail girl, more of glass of red wine.
Yes, I didn't know anything about Inner Mongolia myself. We went there more out of a whim because we had 3 days left between the Philippines and a conference in Beijing. But it was totally overwhelming.
ReplyDeleteAnd the mocktail with sea-buckthorn was sooo good! And on top you can claim it was so healthy, too!