Pronounced best when yawning

The smoke absolutely filled car #4 of the train creaking its way to Hohhot, the capital of inner mongolia (pronounced hu he ho te). We were leaving Beijing for the first time except for occasional jaunts to the countryside. Bobbing along with the gyrations of the trains were the black haired masses, with only two, as the local children call us, yellow haired.

The bleak pre-rain spring landscape seemed increasingly uninviting as what looked to be a thunderstorm turned out to be a massive dust storm raging through the plains broken only by veins of deep washed out gorges.

Countering the bleakness of the landscape stood the unimaginable kindness of the Mongolian who sat beside us on the final leg from Datong to Hohhot. His Chinese slowed to a pace of understanding for some (hint hint, not me), while his Mongolian, when talking to his little brother, was startlingly different to anything we had ever heard. He explained, and we are still not compeltely sure about this, that he was a singer (perhaps for something like Mongolian Idol). Despite his joblessness he was eager to help us get to our hotel (all the while us naive and cynical westerners were wary for scams).

If we were impressed by his kindness the night before, waking up the next morning to knocks on the door from this titan of generosity just came as a shock. He was determined to help us have a proper Mongolian experience. Hailing cabs, and advising on menu choices, his presence was warm but, towards the end, unwanted as we just had hoped to set our own pace of travel.

The clear-aired neon and concrete outpost that is Hohhot is unfortunately not welcoming enough to stay for long, and so tomorrow we are off again, this time to another small town (only about 4 million) just on the edge of the desert, striving hard not to be buried in sand.