Best of Inner Mongolia, China: Hohhot, Xilamuren Grasslands, Gobi Desert, Genghis Khan Mausoleum, Erenhot & Mongolian Heritage - A 2026 First-Person Guide
Browse more guides: China travel | Asia destinations Best of Inner Mongolia, China: Hohhot, Xilamuren Grasslands, Gobi Desert, Genghis Khan Mausoleum, Erenhot & Mongolian Heritage - A 2026 First-Person Guide I will be honest with you. When I first told friends in Beijing that I was heading north to Inner Mongolia for two and a half weeks in 2026, the reaction was almost always the same gentle squint. They asked if I would not rather go to Yunnan for the rice terraces, or Xinjiang for the Tianshan mountains, or Sichuan for pandas and Tibetan towns. Inner Mongolia, they said, was empty. Cold. Strange. A place of grass, sand, mutton, and silence. After fourteen days of driving from Hohhot up to the Hulunbuir steppe, then back south through the Ordos plateau, the Badain Jaran sand sea, and finally out at the Erenhot border post, I came home convinced that the squint was wrong and the silence was the point. Inner Mongolia is the most underrated province in the People's Republic ...