Mongolia | New Book | Wanders in the Khentii Mountains of Mongolia

In 1997 I did a ten-day horse trip to the Onon Hot Springs and the beginning of the Onon River in Khentii Aimag, northeast of Ulaanbaatar, as described in my book Wanders in Northern Mongolia. On the return leg of the trip I ascended 7,749-foot Burkhan Khaldun, also known as Khentii Khan Uul, arguably the most sacred mountain in Mongolia. The mountain is mentioned in the Secret History of the Mongols, a thirteenth-century account of the rise of the Mongols under Chingis Khan, and it was here, according to the Secret History, that Temüjin—the future Chingis Khan—hid from the Merkid tribesmen who had kidnapped his wife and wanted to capture him. According to legend, Chingis Khan also came here to pray before embarking on his military campaigns. Later the mountain would be inextricably bound up in the cult of Chingis Khan and also become a pilgrimage site for Buddhists. Still later some would claim that Chingis Khan was born near Burkhan Khaldun and was buried on its summit.

Not long after my trip two Mongolian historians, D. Bazargür and D. Enkhbayar, published a book entitled Chinggis Khaan Atlas. The Atlas contained thirty-seven maps (including insets) depicting in great detail the locations of many places and events mentioned in the Secret History of the Mongols. After I had studied the Atlas in detail and interviewed Bazargür and Enkhbayar I decided that I would return to the Burkhan Khaldun area and visit some of the places shown on the maps.

 

In the meantime I had made a pilgrimage to 21,778-foot Mount Kailash, the sacred mountain in Tibet worshipped by Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Bönpos (followers of the Bön religion), shamans, and others, and by then also a favorite destination for adventure tourism. No one is allowed to climb to the summit of Mount Kailash, but thousands of people a year circumambulate the mountain via a thirty-two-mile-long path. A pilgrimage circuit of a sacred place like Kailash is known as a khora. Khoras are always done clockwise around the sacred place or object, unless you are a contrarian Bönpo, who do khoras counter-clockwise (I encountered several Bönpos walking counter-clockwise around Mount Kailash). The Kailash khora, the high point of which is the 18,200-foot Drölma Pass, is a strenuous endeavor. The week I was in the Kailash area at least ten people perished while circumambulating the mountain. Several, reportedly, were elderly Hindus from India who may have come here, consciously or unconsciously, to transmigrate at this sacred place. Some hardy Tibetans, however, do the khora in one day. Most people take two or three days (I made it in two and a half days). 

Mount Kailash

After returning from Kailash I got the idea of doing a khora around Burkhan Khaldun, which without stretching the imagination too much could be considered Mongolia’s equivalent of Mount Kailash. I would of course not do the khora on foot but by horse, the traditional mode of travel in Mongolia. From what I could determine in Ulaanbaatar from talking to knowledgeable people, including several lamas familiar with sacred mountains, there was no tradition of doing a khora around Burkhan Khaldun. I was assured, however, that there was no law, custom, or tradition forbidding a khora of the mountain. Burkhan Khaldun was within the boundaries of the 4,740 square-mile Khan Khentii Strictly Protected Area, the Mongolian equivalent of a national park, and permits were needed to make extended trips in the area, but these could be easily obtained from the Strictly Protected Area offices in Ulaanbaatar. 

I had no sooner decided upon this course of action than I got a call from the translator I had used on my first trip to Burkhan Khaldun. She said that Zevgee, the Kherlen River herdsman from whom I had rented horses and who served as my guide on my first trip, was in town and wanted to talk to me. I met with Zevgee and his wife Tümen-Ölzii at a local pizza parlor. Zevgee wanted to know if I had any more horse trips in mind. By then in his early sixties, Zevgee was semi-retired, having turned over his herds to his sons, and had a lot of free time on his hands. I knew he enjoyed doing horse trips in the Khentii Mountains and I suspected he also needed the extra money from a horse trip to see him through the upcoming winter. I explained to him the khora I had done around Mount Kailash in Tibet and suggested that we do a khora around Burkhan Khaldun by horse. He was of course familiar with the concept of khoras. They are often done around sacred places and objects in Mongolia. 

I had been told by several knowledgeable people that in the nineteenth and early twentieth century there was a khora route around Bogd Khan Uul, the huge massif that looms up to the south of Ulaanbaatar, although admittedly I was never able to get details of its exact path. Also, pilgrims would routinely do khoras when visiting Erdene Zuu, the monastery founded in 1685-86 by Avtai Khan (1554–1588), the great-grandfather of Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia (now a museum located on the outskirts of Kharkhorin, in Övörkhangai Aimag). First they would circumambulate the wall surrounding the monastery, which measures roughly 1350 feet on each side. Then they would circumambulate the three Zuu Temples at the southwest corner of the monastery complex. Entering the Central Zuu Temple, they would then circumambulate the famous Jowo statue, the centerpiece of the temple, passing behind it via a corridor along the back wall. 

Erdene Zuu 

Mini-khoras are also often done around ovoos, or stone cairns, that mark passes on highways and other auspicious places. Passing such an ovoo, many drivers will stop and circumambulate it three times. Some drivers, passing an ovoo on a pass, just honk their horns and claim that this counts as a khora. 

While a khora around an ovoo at a highway pass can be completed in ten or fifteen seconds, some khoras take considerably longer. It has long been believed in esoteric circles that the 1925–28 Roerich Expedition through Inner Asia, led by artist, mystic, spy, arch-intriguer, and hard-core Aghartian-Shambhalist Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947), was actually a khora around the mythical kingdom of Shambhala, believed to be located somewhere in Inner Asia. The expedition began in Srinagar, India, and made a vast clockwise circuit through India, East Turkestan, Russia, Mongolia (passing through Ulaanbaatar), China, Tibet, and back to India. The several books written by the Roerichs about the expedition did not mention that they interrupted the khora by making a side trip to Moscow, where they attempted to enlist the new communist government in a quixotic scheme to establish a new kingdom of Shambhala in Inner Asia. For more see my In Search of Shambhala: The 1925-1928 Roerich Expedition in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

After discussing these various khoras, Zevgee, like my other informants, says he is unaware of any tradition of doing khoras around Burkhan Khaldun. Although born in Bayankhongor Aimag, in southwest Mongolia, he has lived in the upper Kherlen River Valley since his early twenties and is recognized as a fount of local lore. His wife, Tümen-Ölzii, was born and raised in the Kherlen Valley and is also very knowledgeable about local traditions. She too has not heard of any tradition of doing khoras around Burkhan Khaldun. Both concurred, however, that there was no prohibition against it. Zevgee was quite excited about the idea and had mapped out a rough itinerary on a paper napkin even before we finished our pizza. Continued.

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