Unless you're under 25, you'll return from an Inner Mongolia weekender more tired than when you left. But you'll also sleep deeper than any other night since coming to China, having been recalibrated with fresh oxygen, and the knowledge that there's still a whole lot of glorious nothing just past the gray horizon.

If you can get a group of ten or more together in Beijing, the whole trip won't cost much more than 400 RMB a head - that includes tin can transport, a spare little room in a farmer's courtyard, big Chinese countryside meals, a day's horse riding, and a lamb cookout. The beauty lies in the fact that you couldn't get better accommodations in that corner of the world for ten times that amount. Nor would you want them. Inner Mongolia precludes the frilly like Monaco precludes the déclassé.

Hope you have your gang of ten, a dozen, fifteen, otherwise better not to go than spend ten hours over the course of the weekend, hunched in the forced intimacy of a mini-bus with sprung seats. With friends and friends of friends, well, there is the beer, the getting-to-know-you convo on the way there, the reminiscing way back. China hands know the value of a native Mandarin-speaking pal for smoothing out a thousand potential snags, from détente with the driver to no fried sheep blood in the scrambled eggs.

Better to leave Friday after work and arrive at your courtyard in midnight darkness, to shield your prissy eyes from just how ramshackle a joint your 400-odd RMB gets you. Inside, the sheets are clean and spread thin over rickety beds. Settle in quick; the roosters' cacophony begins at 4 a.m., your farmer hosts' not much later. An omelet made from eggs snatched not twenty meters away will help make up for the lost sleep, and fortify you for the main event - horse riding.

A master of horseflesh might look over the splay-footed nags on offer and wonder if the glue factory is nearby. Otherwise, you're more preoccupied with being as far out of a city as it seems possible to be, without having endangered yourself. Open grassland rolling into gentle hills for ever and ever, your little village cluster of brick and dirt only a tiny stain on it all. A pregnant mule will do as long as it means getting away from the last vestiges of civilization and out into God's country.

But the loftiest sentiments are vulnerable to the lowest discomforts. These nags seldom walk and more seldom gallop. Instead it's a steady trot that, for them, means getting back to some grass in the shade soon without too much effort. For you, it means bouncing straight up and down in the saddle. Half an hour later, all but your most generously-padded friends are suffering from acute Brokeback buttocks. Curse the green hills and fresh air; thrice curse the contemptuous sidelong glances of well-heeled Chinese in jodhpurs gliding by on proper steeds. A kingdom for a taxi straight back to Beijing....

It's an eon to your backside, but three hours back into the village. This second arrival at the courtyard puts things in proper perspective. The outside trough for washing up is a miniature oasis, your tiny room a sanctuary. Lunch much like breakfast but much appreciated, not as much as a post-prandial snooze. Then a knock at the door. Will this lamb do?

Any dedicated carnivore should look his dinner in the face, then be present at the slaughter. "Why is there water in its eyes?"

A by-standing farmer -"It's crying."

"What?"

"It's crying. Sheep know when they're going to die. So do pigs and cows."

Evening shadows turn the courtyard from dusty wreck to enchanted relic. A bonfire casting long shadows helps the effect. The horror of seeing where meat comes from vanishes once the first platter of spit-roasted lamb appears. Yearning for digital entertainment disappears once a finger points skyward - stars, so many and shiny and long-forgotten that one suspects trickery.

Among the cluster of green bottles full and empty appears a clear one, a sinister gift of the hosts - Mongolian bai jiu. The festivities devolve from fizzy to raucous in the space of half an hour. Much is said to be either conveniently forgotten or blearily repeated on the morrow. Much is done to cause the few sober consternation. Some jackass decides to ‘firewalk', but not before raising the flames with a spit swig of Mongolian spirits.

Next morning, the roosters have less luck waking the guests. When they do rise, they shuffle about creakily, victims of equestrian arthritis. "Shall we ride horses again today?" There is hope for the adventurous-minded yet temporarily crippled: ATVs, four-wheel buggies that can bound over the hills without so much as a "Giddyap!" or "G-dd-n this horse!" A few dozen leagues of rolling along hillsides, the fields laid out in green expanse, your personal moto-preserve, enough to forget yesterday's discomfort, to want to keep making for the next valley and the next.

Take the bus back in after lunch. You'll want to see the mountains as you drop over the lip of the plains into the Beijing smog bowl, a last treat for the eyes before all again turns hazy, your view again restricted by the nearest hundred meter stack of poured concrete and steel. Still and all, a hot shower will never feel so good, and as you think back on the ubiquitous horse dung, and feel the persistent throb of your aching backside, you'll most likely decide you're not quite ready to turn country mouse.