Hohhot

For travelers, this city serves mainy as a launching point to the amazing desert and grasslands of Inner Mongolia. This is a relatively generic mid-sized Chinese town- skip it and head deeper into the territory.

Hohhot, located in China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region, is a mix of standard Han China and Mongolian cultures. For example, Mongolian writing and chinese characters exist side by side on most signs (I had no idea there was a written Mongolian language, let alone one as strikingly exotic as it turns out to be… see the attached photo for an example of their written language).

Short drives (a couple of hours) out of the city you can find an absolutely barren desert with a river running through it or you can visit the grasslands and see yurts, horses and meet Mongolian people (who use Honda motorcycles more than horses these days). Both places are beautiful but the grasslands seem more “genuine” and endless while the desert is more touristy and limited in scope.

I hear it gets quite cold there in the winter (like, -25C cold) but the summer conditions are fantastic (i.e. warm and dry).