9-Day Hulunbuir and Arxan In-Depth: the Whole Northeast Quarter

Almost every Hulunbuir trip starts at Hailar, the district town of the region's east, where the airport takes flights from Beijing, Harbin and - seasonally - several other cities. Your guide meets you at arrivals with the plan already mapped against your days and the weather. The town itself is small and pleasant: Genghis Khan Square at its center, the remains of a Japanese-built underground fortress from the 1930s on its northern edge for those interested in the awkward history, and a night market that runs hard all summer.

Dinner is the local signature, ice-boiled lamb: raw mutton cooked at the table in a pot of ice cubes and mineral water, which sounds like a trick and is genuinely good - the cold start keeps the meat tender and the broth clean. Early night; tomorrow goes into the grassland proper.

The Moergele river spends its whole length looping back on itself through the grassland, and the Chinese novelist Lao She gave it the name that stuck - 'the first curved water under heaven'. From the ridge viewpoints the river looks like a cursive signature across the meadow, with herds moving along it all day. The main deck costs nothing; we also drive the ridge road along the north bank, stopping wherever the light is doing something, and your guide finds the unpaved stretches where the herds come down to water.

The afternoon is the drive north to Erguna city - three hours of pure grassland highway, sheep and cattle and horse herds crossing at will, fields of hay bales from late July, and the landscape folding into low hills as you approach the Genhe river. We stop at a working ranch for tea. Overnight Erguna.

The Erguna wetland sits at the point where the Genhe river fans out into an inland delta before joining the Erguna, and it is routinely called the largest wetland in Asia - an honest guide will say the ranking depends on your definition, but the view from the boardwalk needs no superlative: a green flood plain in oxbows and islands, with the horse-head-shaped river bend the viewpoint is named for. The ticket includes the shuttle. Go in the last two hours of daylight, when the wetland goes gold and the mist rises off the channels.

The birch forest park nearby is a planted-with-nature's-help stand of white birch with boardwalk loops - in late September it is the first place in Hulunbuir to turn, and even at the height of summer the light under the canopy is worth an hour. Reindeer from the Aoluguya Ewenki herd are kept here for visitors to meet; your guide explains the difference between a photo prop and the real herding life further north. Overnight Erguna.

North of Erguna the road follows the border river through Enhe and Shiwei, townships founded by Russian settlers and Chinese frontiersmen a century ago, whose descendants - Russian ethnicity Chinese citizens, most now three or four generations in - still build log houses called mukeleng and bake leba bread in outdoor ovens. The river is narrow here: the far bank is Russia, close enough to read the watchtower signs. In Enhe we do a family visit - tea, jam, bread fresh from the oven, and the complicated family histories your guide translates. Shiwei, further up, is the more compact of the two, with a small border port viewpoint.

The drive itself is the other attraction: the border road ('the kadian line') runs through the finest scenery on the whole Hulunbuir loop - river on one side, hay meadows and birch ridges on the other. Photographers should be out of the villages by late afternoon for the light on the river bends. Overnight in Enhe or Shiwei.

Mordaga - the name is said to mean 'set out on the expedition' in Mongolian - is the forest-park gateway to the deepest part of the Greater Khingan range, two hours northwest of Erguna. This is the other half of Hulunbuir that the grassland postcards leave out: a working timber and hunting landscape of larch and birch, cold rivers, and the small settlements of the Oroqen and Ewenki, the forest peoples whose reindeer and birch-bark canoes made them famous in Chinese anthropology. The park road climbs through the forest to ridge viewpoints over an unbroken canopy that goes gold from mid-September.

Photographers should note the light: the forest is at its best in the first and last two hours. In season your guide can arrange a forest walk with a local guide from one of the settlements - not a performance, just a man who grew up in these woods explaining what you are looking at. Overnight back in Erguna or on to Enhe.

The road from Erguna to Arxan is a day of pure transit that refuses to feel like one: the first hours run through the south Hulunbuir grassland at its widest, with hay meadows, herds and long sightlines, and the afternoon climbs into the wooded hills where the Greater Khingan range begins. We stop where the light says - the roadside aobao shrines, a herder camp selling milk products, the ridge viewpoints - and lunch at a proper roadside town rather than a service station.

Arxan appears at the end of the afternoon: a small spa town in a valley of volcanic hills, its name meaning 'hot holy water'. If the timing works we take the detour to Rose Peak, the red granite tors south of town, in the last light. Overnight Arxan town.

Arxan National Forest Park is the forested heart of the Arxan UNESCO Global Geopark, inscribed in 2017, where the Greater Khingan range shows its volcanic plumbing: crater lakes, lava fields and hot springs in one compact valley system. The ticket - 130 yuan entry plus 105 yuan shuttle - is valid for 48 hours, so we take the east line today: the Camel Hump Peak crater lake first, a steep twenty-minute climb to a near-perfect circle of water in a green cone; then the Santan gorge where the river runs cold and fast under three terraces; and Azalea Lake, which is ringed with rhododendrons in May-June and mirror-calm by late afternoon.

The shuttle system links the sites on a loop road; your guide times them against the light and the crowds. Note the altitude is modest but the walking adds up - wear real shoes. Overnight inside the park at the Tianchi service area if available, or back in Arxan town.

Day two in the park takes the west line. Shitanglin is a plateau of broken basalt flowing with dwarf pines that have rooted directly in the rock - the trees are decades old and knee-high, and the lava field runs for kilometers. The Arxan Tianchi, the park's principal crater lake, sits at the top of a longer stair climb and is the one on all the postcards; locals claim the water level never visibly changes and never freezes in full - your guide will let you test the second claim against the season.

On the way out, stop at the unfreezing river below the park, a stretch kept open all winter by geothermal warmth, misting at minus thirty while the landscape around it is solid. In Arxan town the hot springs are the evening option - the town's name means 'hot holy water' and the bathhouses are fed by the real thing. Overnight Arxan.

Hailar Dongshan Airport is twenty minutes from the town center, with direct flights to Beijing, Harbin and Hohhot and seasonal routes beyond. Your guide times the morning against your flight: the morning market for dried milk products and hand-pulled candy if there is time, or a straight transfer if there is not. If your route continues by train, the Harbin line is one of the great overnight rides in China and we will book you a soft sleeper.