Inner Mongolia

Judging by the looks on the faces of the getting-drunker-by-the-minute men sitting around the table in the smoke-filled restaurant, they had never seen foreign women in this establishment, perhaps in the town itself. But there we were, 3 foreign women, 1 Chinese woman, and a Chinese man, our intrepid hired driver.
We had driven over the mountains and across grasslands from Beijing to this town whose main purpose seemed to be keeping the desert at bay. As night fell, we were in desperate need of a good meal. Judging by the looks of the place we were under no delusions that the meal would be good, but since we were in the middle of “mutton country” we knew it would be substantial.
We had come in search of Xanadu, the ancient Mongol capital built by Kublai Khan and visited by Marco Polo. I had wanted to make this trip ever since reading In Xanadu by William Dalrymple. Now that I was living in Beijing, just over the mountains from where these ruins lay, I was determined to get there.
When I told our intrepid driver, a man who had driven across both Europe and Africa, that we wanted to travel to Duolun to see an ancient Yuan Dynasty capital, he thought we were nuts. “Never heard of it,” he grunted. But if these crazy foreign ladies wanted to pay him to drive to Inner Mongolia to look for it, he was game.
I didn’t know exactly where the ruins were; only that they were somewhere out in the grasslands near the town. Figuring out exactly where would have to wait until the morning, after we had eaten and gotten a good night’s rest.
As we settled into eating our hot pot meal, curiosity got the best of the men who had eyed our arrival with amusement.
“What are you doing here,” they asked? “We’re looking for the remains of the ancient Yuan Dynasty capital,” I said, sending the diners into total shock because it was I, one of the yellow-haired foreigners who had responded – in Chinese!” I saw our intrepid driver roll his eyes, signally to them that we were crazy foreigners, and that I seemed to be the craziest one of the bunch.
It was confirmation time – either that we had come to the right place or that we were certifiably nuts. We held our collective breaths.
“Yup,” they said. “You’ve come to the right place. Take the highway west for 20 miles until you see a sign that says “Ancient Yuan Capital Ruins.” Drive 5 miles into the grassland and you’ll be there.”
We basked in the glory of our success as the driver grudgingly acknowledged our sanity.