Leaving Hailar

Our last meal before leaving Hailar was a special one. We headed to a Mongolian restaurant specializing in mutton.

When we arrived we found a small musical troupe with their traditional horse head cellos - a local instrument which is sufficiently iconic that the streetlights on one of the main streets are all shaped to resemble the instrument, including illuminated strings.

Both Bess and Jess were game to give it a try.

Once the food arrived we dug right in. First up was a traditional milk tea - in a large bowl over a flame they cooked rice, some sort of cheese and dried beef, all in sizzling butter, then the milky tea is poured in. Delicious, particularly with the little hard cookies which are dunked in it. Handy to have a local guide to explain all of this.

Next came fried mutton ribs. I snapped a photo, but as soon as I tried the mutton and looked at my greasy fingers I knew that would be the last of the food photos. Not sure how food bloggers keep their cameras clean. For contrast we also had boiled mutton bones - very fresh and tender.

Next stop was a museum dedicated to the Ewenki people, a set of tribes that span the forest and plains of northern China, eastern Russia and Mongolia. It was interesting looking for similarities and differences with First Nations across Canada.

A quick stop to view a bridge built during the Japanese occupation, later destroyed to slow the Russian advance.

Here's an interesting side by side comparison of Mongolian and Chinese writing. Our guide described Mongolian writing as taking Chinese writing and then twisting the paper around and around.

The tablet describes this guy on his horse:

Genghis Kahn. Rather popular in these parts.

Our final stop was to make a wish and tie our scarves to a monument - apparently a stone considered sacred because it was brought there from Genghis Kahn's birthplace.

Well not quite our final stop. To burn off energy after so many hours in the van we stopped at the Hailar University to run up the hill for a view of the city.

And get a view of the massive scale of construction that seems to be happening just about everywhere.

Then it was farewell to our guide, thanking her for a very friendly and cheerful tour through the Hailar area, and a late night flight back to Beijing.

Tomorrow we're taking an early high speed train to Xi'an, so we're staying in a hotel right next to the west railway station, one of five train stations in Beijing.