Why is Inner Mongolia not as crowded as Xinjiang? (Part 1)

The book "My Altay" has made Xinjiang a popular tourist destination in 2024. However, this western destination has been popular for the past two years: during peak seasons and holidays, the Duku Highway becomes a "traffic jam highway," the Nalati Grassland becomes a crowded market, and there are more tourists than cattle and sheep in the Kalajun Pasture... In Kanas, the top tourist attraction in Xinjiang, the Hemu Village, which used to be crowded only around the National Day holiday, is now fully booked in mid-July, and it is not uncommon for a small cabin to cost thousands of yuan per night. But the strange thing is, why is Inner Mongolia, with its vast grasslands and pastures, not as crowded as Xinjiang? We can analyze this from three aspects. First, although both Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia cover an area of over 1 million square kilometers, the former is almost pentagonal. As a result, many people who travel to Xinjiang usually take a circular route to visit all the scenic spots in Xinjiang without retracing their steps. At most, they will divide their trip into two parts: northern and southern Xinjiang. Longer travel routes are more likely to attract tourists. In contrast, Inner Mongolia is an irregular strip, with its northernmost point close to the northernmost part of China, its eastern part adjacent to the three northeastern provinces, and its western end extending to the northwest, only 60 kilometers away from the easternmost part of Xinjiang. At the same time, compared to the 2,400-kilometer straight-line distance from east to west, the distance between the north and south of Inner Mongolia is much smaller. This results in a situation where few people can travel across the entire Inner Mongolia in one trip, unless they are self-driving travelers touring the whole country. Otherwise, organizing a circular tour of Inner Mongolia is extremely difficult. Compared to Xinjiang, which has only three neighboring provinces (ignoring the number of neighboring countries), Inner Mongolia has eight neighboring provinces to the east and south. At least, tourists from these neighboring provinces rarely travel across the entire Inner Mongolia in one trip, and most of them only visit nearby areas. Tourists from further south also prefer to include a certain area of Inner Mongolia in the same travel route as a neighboring province. For example, they may include Alxa and the Hexi Corridor in Gansu or northern Ningxia in one trip, visit the Mulan Weichang in Hebei while driving to the Ulan Butong in Inner Mongolia, or enter northern Hulunbuir from Mohe in Heilongjiang.