Vast land, few people and reverence for Genghis Khan

After a 15-hour overnight journey from Beijing onboard an olden-day green train, when a colleague and I arrived at a station in Dongsheng district of Ordos city on a weekday morning in early March, the air outside the railway premises felt cooler than the Chinese capital but not as cold as I had expected Inner Mongolia to be at such a time of the year.

I was geared to meet winter in China's far north but as locals in rural Ordos informed us later, the season this year wasn't fierce at all, despite its reputation. Although during our travels through the Otog Front Banner, which is located in the autonomous region's southwest, we faced gusts of wind on the grasslands.

On our way to the banner - a four-hour road trip from Dongsheng - I spotted some houses, mostly painted white, as well as grave sites in the villages. Large swathes along the expressway appeared uninhabited. Later in Aolezhaoqi, the banner's main town where we spent a night, I realized how empty the streets were.

I hadn't seen so few people in China anywhere before, and the region's vastness seemed to highlight the observation.

Dongsheng, the urban center of Ordos, has been replaced in real estate and public activity by Kangbashi in recent years. Even so, the prefecture-level city appeared less occupied. Its residents didn't have to worry about traffic jams during the day. Rows and rows of buildings stayed dark at night.

The countryside landscape by the highway is dotted with electricity towers beneath which plenty of sheep were seen grazing, while cows and horses didn't appear as frequently during our dayslong visit. Horse racing is a popular recreational sport in Inner Mongolia but used mostly for tourism these days as is the yurt, or traditional Mongolian house.

The grasslands are barren in winter but some year-round shrubs that pop out of red sand dunes breathe life to the area's semi-arid climate.

The Otog Front Banner is mostly covered by grassland.

The percentage of people living below the poverty line is relatively lower as compared to some other parts of China, also because the banner's population is 78,000 and it has a land area of around 1.2 million hectares.

I didn't notice many vehicles on the highway other than trucks carrying coal. Inner Mongolia is among the world's largest coal-producing regions.

Described as the "wolf economy," the region has competed in prosperity with the southern Guangdong province over the years.

The modernization of livestock production and agriculture in Ordos aside, the lifestyles of the once nomadic groups in the ethnic Mongolian community have changed to the extent that local officials were unable to provide numbers of even semi-nomadic people present in Ordos. They estimated some such groups live in the region's northeast.

But amid all the changes, Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire, has remained the community's most revered figure. His portraits adorn the walls of houses in rural Ordos. The city has a memorial hall dedicated to the "great unifier" of the steppes although many historical accounts suggest his remains were never found.

Excavations in Mongolia, the country, have been halted in the past.