Mountaineering through Inner Mongolia

Honestly, if given the choice, above almost anything else I would really like to climb mountains. Not just any mountains, but the biggest baddest mountains out there. Serious mountaineering is the coolest thing ever. I watch countless documentaries about them just to pretend for 5 minutes I am one of them. I know it's a random, dangerous and expensive hobby...so I'd just like to try it for half a day then give it back to the people who aren't posers like me. Like the pinch hitter on the Everest summit team. Okay.. not not my best metaphor.

Just a few minutes outside of Yinchuan lie the Helan Mountains. They run between Ningxia (my province) and Inner Mongolia. I've been a few times, to a place called suyukou. I live in the desert of china and somehow there's a national forest towards at the top of the mountains? The first time I forgot my camera. Smooth move. The second time I brought Austin back! 

AustIn and I both agreed that this was our favorite day of his trip. 

After being up pretty high, we wandered down the mountain, out of the forest, and down a road where we stumbled on a quiet little Buddhist temple and part of the Great Wall. It was amazing.  Sometimes between the snot rockets, rice comas, and the horrifying toilets I kind of forget how awesome China is. Things like this are necessary reminders because they help me keep in mind how much I like China, and why I'm here.

Another part of the Helan mountains has really crazy old rock art carvings. I went back in May to see some of the 6,000 pictures found carved into the side of the mountain. Some of them date back 10,000 years. Imagine Mongolian Mountain Men carving pictures into rocks on the side of a mountain 30 feet in the air. Although I personally like the scenery better, the rock art is what makes these mountains somewhat famous in China. It's nice to spend some time in the mountains because I've not had much time around mountains before. Which makes me interest in mountain climbing all that more bizarre. Although, most of all I just want to jump the border to Inner Mongolia before I leave.

This is the most famous rock art picture of them all. It's the sun god and it kind of definitely looks like an alien. The weather was not great, and lots of the carvings were really high up so I had to mega zoom so I didn't get the best photos...